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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.
meanest slave that toils. The devoutest Greek de
parted this life with extreme reluctance and nothing
but sighs and regrets for the joys he was leaving. He
made all he possibly could out of this life, for he ex
pected nothing in the next. And take him altogether
he was about the best and most useful citizen the
world has ever had and has actually achieved the
most glorious immortality. Perhaps on this very
account.
Cruder in some particulars and infinitely less ar
tistic, but with a rough justice and fearless manliness
about it which lifts it really far above Olympus, was
the Valhalla of our fierce Norse ancestors. This has
many points of resemblance to the happy hunting-
ground stage, for we find the heroes,
"In the halls where Runic Odin howls his war-song to the gale."
seated around the massive board, loaded with the
souls of their favorite meats, drinking mead out of
cups which could never be emptied, issuing forth
every morning, not only to fight but actually to slay
and be slain in furious combat, victors and vanquished
alike, however, recovering from their wounds, or
coming to life again, in time for the night s carouse.
It was a frank copy of the joys of this life writ in
large childish characters ; its naivettS reminds one of
the enthusiasm of a celebrated surgeon who declared
that if there were no amputations in heaven he didn t
want to go there. It was essentially a fighter s
paradise, to which only warriors and their wives,
mothers, or daughters could gain admittance. Its
LIFE ETERNAL. 81
passport was death in battle, and the warrior who was
luckless enough to die a " straw-death " would have
himself scratched with a spear in order that he might
come before its gates with Odin s mark. It was far
in advance of Olympus in that it was not reserved
for the especial favorites of capricious gods, but could
be claimed as a right by every warrior and all men
were such in those days) who had reached a certain
standard of bravery and truthfulness. The vast
majority of the race, however, were forced to content
themselves with an abode in chilly, foggy regions in
the bowels of the earth, presided over by the earth-
goddess Hela, whose name has been modified into
our modern " hell." There was no thought of pun
ishment, or even of disgrace, except perhaps such
flavor of it as might be implied in failure to reach
Valhalla ; it was simply a dreary, monotonous, color
less existence, a sort of necessary old age after the
fierce, loving, fighting youth of this life. If the
Norse ideal of heaven was far below the Christian, its
hell was a far more humane conception than that
fierce and gloomy Oriental idea to which its name
has been transferred and which has become by a sad
travesty the peculiar possession and pride of the
" Gospel of Love."
The Mohammedan Paradise was another concep
tion of the same class, higher in that it recognized
broader grounds of admission than simple war-like
courage and truthfulness, but infinitely lower in the
purely sensual and self-indulgent and almost degene
rating character of the rewards offered, the exclusion
THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO DARWIN.
of woman except in so far as she can gratify man s
passions, and the recognition of " faith " as a substi
tute for " works." Its houris, its palms, its divans,
its fountains, its delicious fruits, its gardens, are such
obvious and vulgar reproductions of earthly ones,
that there is little difficulty in believing the story
told by certain historians that Mohammed actually
constructed such a " paradise " as the Koran de
scribes in some lovely but inaccessible mountain-val
ley, to which from time to time certain of his faithful
followers would be transported while under the in
fluence of an opiate. After being permitted to re
main there a few hours or days their food would again
be drugged, and they would be brought back to their
tents to testify to others on their return to conscious
ness that the half had not been told. Like Valhalla,
death in battle against the infidel was its surest pass
port, and the reckless bravery which this belief de
veloped in the two races is, to say the least, a highly
suggestive commentary upon our statement that the
greatest part of the fear of death is the dread of what
may happen in a future life.
Another great group of beliefs, the Egyptian Mys
teries, have so completely succeeded in remaining
what their name implied (as indeed they were in
tended to) that little or no definite idea can be
formed of their conception of a future life. All we
can catch is occasional glimpses of an ever-shifting
and misty group of deities, some in animal, some in
human form, Osiris and Amenti, Thoth and Ptah,
Anubis and Isis, whose only definite function appears
LIFE ETERNAL.
that of a court of inquiry and judgment upon the
souls of the dead. They require a strict account of
the deeds done in the body, the heart of the dead
man is weighed in the scales of Truth, etc. Morality
rather than piety seems to be demanded by them, but
as to the nature of the rewards granted or punish
ments inflicted we are left almost entirely in the
dark. Simply a dim but majestic vision of a judg
ment after death in which Virtue is its own reward
and Sin its own punishment.
The most singular conception of the life to come
is that held by that religion which in age, dignity,
and number of adherents stands at the head of the
great world-religions. At first sight it appears to be
the very apotheosis of pessimism and nihilism, and
yet it is the most ingenious, philosophic, and logical
working-out of the supernatural idea which the world
has ever seen. Much of its thought is magnificent;
its great fundamental conception that the only thing
which is immortal is character (Icarma) and that a
million generations have been needed to develop it,
that many of its stages are passed in animal form,
and that there is an essential, spiritual relation
ship between men, animals, and even plants, is not
only matchless in its poetic beauty, but almost scien
tific in its truthfulness.
The transmigration of souls is a mystic foreshadow
ing of Darwinism. It is by far the justest and
most sweetly reasonable conception of an individual
future life which has ever yet been developed. But
like other religions it is weakest at the point of which
84 THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO DARWIN.
it boasts itself most loudly. Its scheme of develop
ment up to the level of " Homo integer vitae " is su
perb in its insight, its logic, and its truthfulness.
Its view of the past is inspiring, noble, but for the
future it has nothing to offer but a wearisome and
intolerable repetition of former stages of incarnation,
until at last in the very weariness of despair the soul
is glad to take refuge in Nirvena, " neither-conscious-
ness-nor-unconsciousness," " absorption into the soul
of the universe," individual annihilation, eternal
rest.
The desirableness of Nirvana has also been justi
fied by some Buddhist sages from the same theolog
ical standpoint on the familiar priestly ground that
existence is desire and desire is sin ! therefore only
by destroying existence can sin be destroyed and the
summum bonum reached. Again, like most religions,
it is imposing while generalizing upon the past, but
it fails when it attempts to forecast the future. As
a scheme of the past, it is beautiful, fascinating ; as
a scheme of the future, it is found wanting. And
just as elsewhere the prospect of a gloomy after-world
has multiplied tenfold the fear of death. But it is a
superb allegory. Rid the puny individual of this
world-burden of unending existence and eternal re
sponsibility ; let the growth of karma be that of the
race, and each incarnation a new, glad personality ;
let the good that was in each, in its influence and its
memory become a part of the constitution of the race
immortal in fact, and the Darwinist may declare to
the Buddhist as Paul did to the Athenians on Mars,
LIFE ETERNAL. 85
Hill, " Whom therefore ye ignorantly worship, Him
declare I unto you."
And indeed there are many sayings in the teaching
of the Buddha, as Paul Cams has shown in his beau
tiful " Gospel of Buddha" which give ground for the
belief that such was his real conception, though neces
sarily veiled in the parables in which he spoke.
Certainly some of his most spiritual and gifted fol
lowers to-day hold very nearly this view of karma and
Nirvana and profess a creed which is more nearly
ideal both from a devotional and an evolutionary point
of view than almost any other which is formally ac
cepted by any western church to-day.
When we attempt to study that view of the future
life known as the Christian Heaven, we quickly find
that we have to deal with two almost wholly distinct
and widely different conceptions. One of these is the
popular, orthodox " Heaven " of the prayer-meeting
and Sunday-school, and the other is the " Kingdom
of Pleaven " of Christ s teachings, two utterly dis
similar regions.
The essential features of the old-fashioned ortho
dox heaven are briefly, a city of great beauty whose
streets are paved with pure gold, whose twelve gates
are constructed each of a single pearl, its walls of jas
per and its foundations of precious stones. There is
no night, and no sea ; while through the midst of the
city flows a sparkling river with ever-bearing fruit-
trees on either bank. Here the redeemed abide for
ever and ever, clad in white and shining garments,
with crowns of gold upon their heads, with harps and
86 THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO DARWIN.
palm-branches in their hands. They also acquire the
power of flying and become " angels." Their entire
time is occupied by chanting praises and bowing
down before a great white throne ; as all mysteries
are revealed to them there is no need of mental effort,
and as there is neither hunger or thirst or pain of any
kind, bodily effort is equally unnecessary. In short,
it is as one godly old hymn-writer has expressed it, a
place " where congregations ne er break up, and Sab
baths have no end."
To this wondrous city, souls of all true believers
are carried immediately after death by certain winged
beings known as angels : to find one of the gates
aforesaid either barely "ajar," half shut, or flung
widely open for their admittance, according to the
degree of their merit. The redeemed all become
young and beautiful, yet retain enough of their
earthly likeness to be readily recognizable by all their
friends who have preceded or who may follow them.
They are welcomed at the gate by the former and
themselves look eagerly forward to the coming of the
latter. This is bad enough, but it is reserved for a
very small minority of the race as a special favor.
Not far from the walls of this city, separated from
it only by a great gulf which is so narrow as to read
ily permit recognition to take place across it, is a fiery
pit, the abode of the lost. Here nine-tenths of the
race are condemned to writhe through all eternity,
tortured by blistering heat, by raging thirst, by suf
focating sulphur-fumes, and every agony that the in
genuity of devils can devise, so that in clear view of
LIFE ETERNAL. 87
the beautiful city, " the smoke of their torment as-
cendeth for ever and ever." So close are these poor
wretches to the jasper walls that their cries for mercy
can be distinctly heard, as in case of Dives and Laza
rus. From a mere human standpoint, one would have
supposed that this would have somewhat interfered
with the peace of mind of the redeemed, especially as
they could readily recognize the voices of a majority
of their friends and loved ones : but their dispositions
have become so spiritual and celestial that it does
not distress them at all ; indeed, one good Calvinistic
divine has specially dwelt upon the watching of the
tortures of the damned and congratulating oneself
upon escaping therefrom, as one of the joys of heaven.
Of this whole popular conception, it may simply
be said that it is almost absolutely without founda
tion in the teachings of the Master ; that what little
part of its imagery is biblical is taken chiefly from
the Revelation of John, a book which is now declared
by a majority of orthodox critics to be a burning pic
ture of the persecutions under Nero and mystic proph
ecy of the ultimate triumph of the early Church
without any reference to the future life. As to its
theory that the souls proceed to heaven at once after
death, the gospels are so vague that it is impossible
to decide whether this passage occurs before or after
the Last Judgment ; the churches themselves have
differed widely on this point, and one large body still
holds that souls sleep in the grave with the body
until awakened by the " Last Trump." Its " recogni
tion " hope is nowhere distinctly stated and barely
88 THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO DARWIN.
implied in three passages, while as to its belief, that
our souls become angels and that the latter have
wings, it has not a word of support in the Scriptures.
Its inferior and attendant spirits are taken bodily
from the pages of Dante and Milton. In short, it is
simply a " Happy Hunting Ground " rearranged ac
cording to saintly and feminine ideas, combined with
a Hades which for injustice, atrocity, and savage vin-
dictiveness is unparalleled even in Dahomey.
The " Kingdom of Heaven," " Kingdom of God,"
"Life Everlasting" of the Master s own teachings is
a conception of widely different form and temper.
Its description consists principally of a noble strain
of lofty and fearless prophecy, of the ultimate triumph
of Good and defeat of Evil which throbs like an ever-
recurring Leitmotiv through all of the Four Gospels.
Like all true music it is beautiful, entrancing, sweetly
mysterious. Its lofty beauty is marred by no childish
working-out of trivial details. The great chord is
struck by a master-hand, and the quivering over-tones
of each responsive heart are left to finish the melody.
"Every work of man shall be brought into judgment,
whether it be good or whether it be evil." Right
eousness and Truth shall and must prevail. Evil
and falsehood will certainly both punish and defeat
themselves : " the meek shall inherit the earth ; "
this is the burden of His song. As to the geographi
cal where, and the chronological when, He is divinely
silent. It is enough for us to know that it shall be
hereafter and that it begins now : nay, that this
divine process is actually going on within us, about
LIFE ETERNAL. 89
us, among us, if we will only open our clouded eyes
to see it. The Eternal Life of the Master is now,
and has been from all eternity. " He that believeth
on the Son hath everlasting life," His commandment
is life everlasting. " The Kingdom of God is within
you. * " This is life everlasting, that they may know
thee, the only true God/
This is no mere endless prolongation of petty, in
dividual existence. It is something far nobler and
higher than this. Hear Farrar s burning words :
" The use of the word aiuvioc, and of its Hebrew equivalent,
olam, throughout the whole of Scripture, ought to have been
sufficient to prove to every thoughtful and unbiased student
that it altogether transcends the thoroughly vulgar and un
meaning conception of endless. Nothing, perhaps, tends to
prove more clearly the difficulty of eradicating an error that
has once taken deep and age-long root in the minds of theo
logians, than the fact that it should still be necessary to prove
that the word eternal, far from being a mere equivalent for
everlasting, never means everlasting * at all, except byre-
flexion from the substantives to which it is joined ; that it is
only joined to those substantives because it connotes ideas
which transcend all time ; that to make it mean nothing but
time endlessly prolonged, is to degrade it by filling it with a
merely relative conception which it is meant to supersede and
by emptying it of all the highest conceptions which it properly
includes."
As to a continued individual existence after death
it is nowhere definitely taught by the Master, and is
only even implied on any broad and reasonable prin
ciple of interpretation in three of his sayings. This
may seem an extreme statement, but I challenge proof
90 THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO DARWIN.
to the contrary from the Gospels. The three pas
sages alluded to are the parable of Dives and Laza
rus, the decision upon the case of the woman who had
had seven husbands, and the promise to the thief on
the cross. The first of these is a parable pure and
simple, spoken to the scoffing, sneering Pharisees.
The story is taken directly and bodily from .Rabbini
cal literature a weapon from their own armory
turned against them with deadliest effect. If it be
regarded as anything more than this it is bathos,
for it depicts a state of affairs which would be
almost more intolerable for the saved than for the
lost.
In the second instance the question is squarely
asked and an answer distinctly declined. All that
the Master vouchsafes in his wisdom is that Abraham,
Isaac, and Jacob are still "living" (of which the
whole Jewish nation was bodily proof), but as to the
woman in question, u in the resurrection they neither
marry nor are given in marriage, but are as the angels
of God." To the dying thief were spoken the thrill
ing words, " This day shalt thou be with me in para
dise." And was he not ? Yea, verily, in the paradise
of the love and sympathy of all Christian hearts
through all the ages since and to come. If it is to
be taken literally, what are we to make of Christ s
saying to Mary, two days later in the garden of the
sepulchre, " Touch me not, for I am not yet ascended
unto my Father."
All other references of this sort which have even
the appearance of being personal are to a mysterious
LIFE ETERNAL. 91
" second coming, * " in the clouds of heaven," which
it is distinctly stated, shall take place within the life
time of that generation (Matthew xvi., 28; Mark
xii., 25; Luke xx., 35, and xxiv., 34), but as to
whose occurrence history is silent. All other allu
sions such as " If a man keep my commandments lie
shall never taste of death," " In my Father s house
are many mansions," are not only as well, but better
explained by referring them to the ultimate triumph
of Good and the deathlessness of Truth. Why, when
Christ distinctly tells us that " the Kingdom of God
is within us," that " to know God is life everlasting"
and that He is the Resurrection the bewilderingly
beautiful instance of the Creation of Life out of the
dust of the earth we should obstinately persist iu
referring and postponing all three to some mysterious
future region, " beyond the skies and beyond the
tomb," is hard to understand. Even that matchless
epitome of the wants and aspirations of the human
heart, the Lord s Prayer (Revised Version, Luke),
contains not a word of allusion to such a region.
The grandly majestic "Last Judgment" is the Ver
dict of History, and nothing could be more "unor
thodox " than its superb criterion, which is neither
creed, nor faith, nor even intentional service of God
(" Lord, when saw we thee an hungered and fed
thee?"), but the broad and noble principle of com
mon humanity, " Inasmuch as ye did it unto the least
of these my brethren, ye did it unto me."
In short, the " Zutr t aiiuvw?" of Christ is literally the
"Life of the Ages " of Darwin.
92 THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO DARWIN.
To what conclusion, now, are we led by this review
of the type-religions of the world, as to the effect of a
belief in a future life upon the fear of death. Only
one seems possible, that it increases it fivefold. The
happy hunting-ground is reserved only for chiefs
and warriors of highest renown, and many are the
risks which even these have to run upon their passage
thither. Only a few of the most favored of mortals
can hope to scale Olympus. The halls of Odin open
to none save heroes of high renown or faultless cour
age. The Paradise of Mohammed is reserved for
the faithful who have sealed their devotion with their
blood, and admits neither women nor children. Nir
vana is a " heaven " of such doubtful attractiveness
as to require a good deal of philosophy to enable
one to contemplate its attainment with resignation ;
while as to the orthodox Christian heaven : " Strait
is the gate and narrow is the way that leadeth unto
Life, and few there be that find it." Its most enthu
siastic proclaimers do not offer the hope that more
than a very small percentage of the race will ever
reach it. Indeed, they seem almost inclined to gloat
over the prospect of having it all to themselves.
None but " desirable " people will be admitted there,
they trust. In brief, every conception of an indi
vidual future life condemns the vast majority of men
to a state of either cheerless, ghostly gloom, or of
absolute torment. Destroy such a belief and you
rob death of half its terrors. Tis not dying that
men dread so much as living again, and " thus con
science doth make cowards of us all."
LIFE ETERNAL. 93
As to the so-called " restraining influence " of such
a belief and the extent to which it supports and en
forces morality, the more attentively this is consid
ered, the less will be found to be its value. High,
noble natures need no such incentive ; base ones are
but little affected by it. Assure a scoundrel of im
munity from punishment in this world, which is un
fortunately usually implied in the orthodox view, and
he will risk the next one. If he is willing to run the
gauntlet of the immediate constable and jail, how
much more that of the remote possibilities of hell?
The criminal is essentially the man who blindly gluts
the craving of to-day, with an utter disregard of to
morrow.
Besides, there is always the chance of a " death
bed repentance " and usually that of buying absolu
tion by devoting part of the spoils to the Church.
" Charity covereth a multitude of sins." In Catholic
countries it is notorious that the more colossally vil
lainous the brigand the more devout his piety and
magnificent his offerings. Indeed, a distinguished
English penologist (Havelock Ellis : The Criminal)
goes so far as to open his chapter on " The Religion
of the Criminal " with the horrifying remark, " In all
countries religion or superstition is intimately con
nected with crime." As a check for the well-disposed
it is unnecessary ; for the ill-disposed, worthless, or
worse. Furthermore, it must not be overlooked that
whatever value belief in a future life may have in
this respect has to be offset by the torturings, human
sacrifices, funeral victims, " head-hunting," child-
94 THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO DARWIN.
burning, Jesuit massacres, thuggisrn, " infant-damna
tion," Mormon polygamy, and other such observances
and beliefs which are inspired by it alone.
We personally fought at the battle of Hastings and
shall in Armageddon. We are a part of all that ever
has been or is to come. We have lived from the
earliest appearance of life upon this cooling globe and
shall live through all eternity in our descendants or
in those whose existence ours has helped to make
possible. All that is true, all that is good, all that is
brave and virtuous, that " makes for righteousness "
in us and in our influence cannot die, but has become
part of the framework of the universe, has been painted
in the great picture-gallery of nature to bless and
cheer generations yet unborn. This, to my vision, is
the true " Eternal Life," or as Zur) altivw? is better
translated " the life of the aeons," " The Life of the
Ages." All in us that is base, all that is cowardly,
all that is untrue, falls by its own weight, decays by
" the worm that dieth not," is consumed by " the fire
that is not quenched."
What wonder that the righteous are described as
" saved," and the unrighteous as " lost." The ques
tion of salvation becomes, not the selfish one " Shall
I as an individual live after death in a state of happi
ness or misery ? " but the nobler, unselfish one, " How
much of all my work, my character, my influence, ni}^
self will become part of the progress of the race and
of the history of the universe?"
All faiths, all views agree in this one grand, con
soling thought, that every brave deed, every noble
LIFE ETERNAL. 95
effort is of itself immortal. That the good cannot
die, and that every effort, however feeble or appar
ently unsuccessful, to make the world happier for our
having lived in it, shall have its reward.
96 THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO DARWIN.
CHAPTER VI.
LOVE AS A FACTOR IN EVOLUTION.
ONE of the most firmly-rooted and widespread
popular misconceptions of the struggle for existence
is that only so-called " brute " or selfish qualities
are concerned in it. It is assumed to be a relentless
and ceaseless war of extermination, whose watch
word is, "every man for himself," and in which no
quarter is or can be given. Strength, selfishness,
and ferocity, " the qualities of the ape and the tiger,"
are the only qualities concerned in or developed by
it. The idea of love, of sympathy, of self-sacrifice
playing any part in it, is regarded as simply absurd.
Indeed, the possession or display of any of these
qualities is gravely declared to interfere with its
legitimate result, the survival of the fittest. Even
by those who admit that this cosmic process is suffi
cient to account for the physical or animal character
istics of man, it is emphatically affirmed that his
mental and moral qualities have been acquired not
by virtue of it, but in direct opposition to it. Not
even the old Calvinistic distinction between " Na
ture " and " Grace " was more sharply drawn than
that between the egotism born of the struggle for
existence and the altruism demanded in the ethical
LOVE AS A FACTOR IN EVOLUTION. 97
and moral sphere. Nor is this impression confined
to the popular mind, for no less revered an authority
than the lamented Huxley in that most painful and
deplorable " swan-song " of his, The Sheldonian
Oration of 1893, declares that what we call goodness
or virtue involves a course of conduct in all respects
opposed to that which leads to success in the cosmic
struggle for existence, since self-assertion is the
essence of the cosmic process, and unmitigated self-
assertion is incompatible with social morality. But
much as we love and admire our great leader, so re
cently taken from us, we love nature more, and re
sent any and all such statements as libels upon her
great, calm, loving processes. It is easy to see the
apparent grounds for this misconception ; but we
affirm that it is a misconception, nevertheless, as a
careful weighing of the facts in the case will prove,
and we venture to assert that Love with its daughter,
Goodness, is not only a legitimate product of the
process but next to Hunger the most powerful factor
in it.
Before proceeding to a consideration of the ques
tion in detail, I wish to call attention to certain
obvious facts, that I think are hardly estimated at
their true value in discussions of this subject. The
first is that the emotion of love itself is a fact as
firmly attested by experience as any other in the
physical world, and hence from a purely naturalistic
standpoint is not only entitled to but must be rec
ognized as one of the factors in cosmic progress.
In this sense it is as genuine a force in the scheme of
98 THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO DARWIN.
progress as gravitation. The animal or man who
permits affection to influence his conduct in the
struggle is obeying a law of nature just as truly as
the one who is influenced by hunger. Love is every
where in evidence and actually at work and must be
reckoned with.
The second is that love and its results being every
where present not only in the human species, in all
ages, but in all the countless forms of life, from the
very earliest dawn of intelligence and consciousness,
there is no conceivable reason why it should not be
regarded as a result and part of the process just as
much as intelligence, combativeness, or muscular
power, and the real onus probandi rests upon those
who assert that it did not so originate and develop.
As Herbert Spencer pertinently remarks in reply
to Huxley, " If the ethical man is not a product of
the cosmic process, of what is he a product?"
Strictly speaking, the struggle for existence and the
naturalist are fully entitled to claim love and moral
ity as their own until " revelation " and the super-
naturalist have proved the contrary. And while not
only in popular but also in a large and weighty pro
portion of scientific thought the cosmic struggle is
regarded as " inadequate " to account for the affec
tions and morality, yet it must also in all fairness be
admitted that from a rational point of view " inade
quate " would be an extremely mild form to apply
to any of the numerous other attempts to account
for them.
The third consideration is that love and selfish-
LOVE AS A FACTOR IN EVOLUTION. 99
ness, or, in the language of tlie day, altruism and
egotism, are, instead of utterly antagonistic arid de
structive to each other as is generally assumed, really
complements! and mutually helpful. Both are ab
solutely essential to progress, and neither could long
exist without the assistance of the other. Either of
them, if carried or followed to an extreme, will de
feat its own ends and prove detrimental to not only
the community but to the individual. It may sound
paradoxical, but it is nevertheless a fact, that any in
telligent and effective egotism must necessarily
include a considerable degree of altruism, not only in
man but in the beast, the bird, the insect. Unbridled
egotism wrecks the " ego " just as surely as it wrongs
the " alter."
Probably nothing would give us a more vivid im
pression of the fundamental and basal character of
love than a consideration of the time of its first ap
pearance in the cosmos. For a long time it was com
monly assumed in discussions of this question that it
was strictly confined to the human species in its
purity, and that even here the genuine article was
possessed only by the few who had acquired it
through the medium of some " gospel " or " revela
tion."
It was admitted that a good imitation of the emo
tion was displayed by "the heathen," and even the
lower animals, but this was officially declared to be
mere " blind instinct," " brute impulse," etc., and of
a totally different nature from the supernatural or
imported variety. But this position has had to be
100 THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO DARWIN.
abandoned and the dignity and holiness both of our
own "fleshly" affections and those of the lower
animals admitted. Love was now said to appear
when infancy did, or wherever living and breathing
young were born which required protection.
But even this line was too narrow, for it obviously
excluded some of the most striking instances of the
passion ; among birds, for instance, in ants, in bees,
in spiders ; nay, even in crustaceans, indeed, traces
of the golden thread may be followed down almost
to the protozoa. In fact, the date of its appearance
is as difficult to fix as that of the creation, with
which it is probably coeval.
Broadly speaking there appear to be two classes of
influences or forces at work in the universe. These
may be roughly described as centrifugal and cen
tripetal, cohesive, separating and individual and
social. Both classes are equally necessary and equally
inherent. For instance, the natural tendency of all
matter is said to be constant movement in a right
line, but everywhere that we find it this influence is
held in check by an attraction between itself and
other atoms known as gravitation.
Thus gravitation might be figuratively described
as a sort of atomic affection. The whole universe is
believed to have been formed by this mutual affinity
between the particles of its original nebula or fire-
mist, causing them to combine first in rings or bands
of different density and coolness, then in rotating
spheres, and so on through endless combinations of
increasing complexity down to the present day.
LOVE AS A FACTOR IN EVOLUTION.
101
The nebular hypothesis is the primitive love-story
of the solar universe. The power of combination is
the mainspring of progress here as elsewhere.
Physicists tell us that the whole difference between
the three states of matter, the gas, the liquid, the
solid, consists simply in the closeness of the relations
between their molecules.
And the more intimate these become, the greater
the possibility of permanent variation and consequent
progress. The gases of to-day are practically those
of the original fire-mist, the fluids have varied but
little since the bounds of gray old ocean were es
tablished. The wondrous development that we see
about us has occurred almost wholly in and through
the firmly coherent solids. Without cohesion no
progress is possible.
Nor is this cohesion mere contact under external
pressure, mere inert resting of one molecule upon
another. Suspend a thread in a saturated solution
of any crystalline salt and watch the result. From
every part of the liquid tiny particles rush to group
themselves around it, until it becomes transformed
into a solid pillar consisting of almost every atom of
the salt in the vessel. There seems to be a positive
clan-feeling between the molecules. And not only
is this affinity for each other active, nay, aggressive
almost, but it is also purposeful. The column around
the thread is not a confused heap of granules but a
wall or mosaic of clean-cut, uniform, delicate crystals
often of most beautiful shape and hue. More than
this, given the salt in solution and the temperature,
102 THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO DAUWIN.
and the exact shape of these crystals can be foretold
with absolute certainty ; the molecules of one salt
will invariably rush together and arrange themselves
in prisms ; of another in needles ; of another in deli
cate and elaborate rosettes or in sparkling diamonds
of six, eight, or ten facets and faultless outline. In
short, the conviction almost suggests itself that these
atoms have not only affection, but its invariable
companion, intelligence.
It goes without saying, of course, that this same
instinctive impulse of combination is the very essence
of the development of those higher forms which we
term " alive," even long before consciousness or voli
tion of any sort can be imagined to exist.
If we watch the wonderful and beautiful division
of labor among the cells which takes place in even
the simplest forms of plant life, must we not almost
imagine that some sort of an understanding exists
between them ? That some sort of blind instinct of
devotion or loyalty to the mass accompanies the
action of one group of cells in burying themselves in
the ground, away from the light, the warmth, the
dew, of another in flattening themselves out into
leaves, all lungs and stomach, and of another in
slirinking down into the woody fibre of the stem or
petrifying themselves into its silicious coating? In
one sense, the relation is on a purely mercantile basis,
each group renounces a part of its birthright in order
to render certain services to the plant-republic, which
in return supplies it with food, water, air, or protec
tion as the case may be. And yet it is hard to rid
LOVE AS A FACTOR IN EVOLUTION. 103
ourselves of the idea that there must be some sort of
esprit de corps, some dim sense of solidarity amongst
them, at all events, even if we are not permitted to
credit them with kindly intentions or with affection
ate sentiments, yet it cannot be denied that their
actions possess these qualities in a high degree. In
the which they are decidedly superior to many pro
fessed philanthropists and reformers among their
descendants of the present day.
Nor is the service rendered by any means always
consistent with the welfare of the individual cell, in
many cases it is exactly the reverse and it literally
" lays down its life for its friends " and performs its
chief function by dying.
We cannot deny them the martyr s death or what
is more difficult, the martyr s life, though we may the
martyr s crown. The same is true of the cells of the
animal organism, including those of our own bodies.
A beautiful illustration of apparent devotion is fur
nished by the white cells of our blood, the leucocytes,
whose principal function appears to be a protection
of the body against all noxious germs or substances
which penetrate its tissues. This they do by hurling
themselves upon the intruder, regardless of whether
they destroy, or are destroyed by him, and either
overwhelm him by their numbers or failing this, im
bed him in their dead bodies so that he may be swept
out of the system without being able to attack the
other tissues. No enemy can enter the fortress save
over their lifeless corpses.
And the singular thing about it is that they are in
104 THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO DARWIN.
no way directly connected with the fixed cells of the
body or under the control of the central nervous
system.
They are a band of free lances ranging up and
down the blood channels, who receive from the body
their bread and salt, and in return are ready to die in
the last ditch in its defense.
The complete individuals also of most forms of
plant-life display a decided tendency to group them
selves together in clumps, in patches, and in masses.
Nor is this due entirely or even mainly to direct
propagation, or peculiarly favorable soil or aspect,
but they actually flourish better under certain de
grees of mutual pressure. Our grasses and grains,
for instance, cannot reach their highest development
except in masses. The huge ear and priceless berry
of the wheat would be impossible were it not for the
support afforded to its slender stalk by its fellows in
the golden billows of the wheat-fields.
The towering stature and spire-like erectness of
the lordly pine can be attained only shoulder to
shoulder with its brethren in the serried ranks of the
dense forest. Alone it dare not brave the winds of
heaven to half that height.
Nor is it solely between cells of the same plant or
plants of the same species that relations of mutual
advantage exist; it has been demonstrated of late
that almost all the classes of higher plants depend
for their very existence upon the existence of swarms
of bacteria in the soil, which change the nitrogen of
the soil, of the air, into ammonia and nitrates in
LOVE AS A FACTOR IN EVOLUTION. 105
which form alone it can be absorbed by the roots of
grasses and herbs. Simply destroy the bacteria and
molds in any given patch of soil by heating it, and
plants will refuse to grow in it. In most cases, of
course, this relation is a mere geographical one, an
accidental co-existence in the same soil-bed, but in
others it is so definite and intimate that a term
has been coined to express it "symbiosis" or
" mutualism."
Common clover, for instance, is largely dependent
for its nourishment upon the abundance of tiny, ap
parently parasitic organisms which attach themselves
to its rootlets, known as "root-knots," which absorb
nitrogen from the air and elaborate it for the use of the
plant. Hence its peculiar power, so highly prized by
the farmer, of not only not impoverishing but actually
enriching the soil in which it grows.
A similar service is rendered by the molds which
form upon the roots of oaks and ashes in certain
soils.
In the plant-world, at least, there is no antag
onism between " the higher life " and the lower ; in
fact, the former absolutely depends upon the latter.
It would, of course, be absurd to claim that any feel
ing of affection or conscious purpose was present in or
prompted by these mutual relations among vegetable
cells, but still it seems hard to imagine its occur
ring with such tremendous frequence and constancy
without some blind instinct of combination, some
dim sense of solidarity, on the part of one or both
groups.
106 THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO DARWIN.
My main object in dwelling upon it is simply to
call attention to the fact that combination is as
essential and important a law of nature as antag
onism, friendly co-operation as hostility.
" Live and let live " is as necessary a part of the
struggle for existence as " war to the knife."
That when man loves he is but giving a name and
conscious shape to impulses which have existed in
the germ since shortly after the earliest appearance
of life on the planet. That love is to him as natural
and necessary an emotion as hunger.
The first appearance and real birthplace of true
love and conscious affection is to be found in the
reproduction of the species. Around this process
cluster alike its earliest memories and its noblest
developments. From its earliest stages there is a
curiously altruistic element about it, a subordination
of the individual to the race.
The amoeba who divides by simple fission is per
forming an act of immense importance to the race,
but of little or no conceivable advantage to himself,
unless he may have been driven to it in the first place
as the only alternative of stagnation and death.
Similarly the hydra, a little higher up in the scale,
thrusts out its buds, apparently far more with refer
ence to the colony, than to any advantage of itself.
The process goes on, rising in type and increasing
in complexity, through the anemone, the star-fish, the
shell-fish, in the same blind instinctive manner, though
with a rude dignity about it that separates it from all
other vital processes, and it is not until we reach the
LOVE AS A FACTOR IN EVOLUTION. 107
point where the division of labor takes the majestic
and far-reaching step of making two individuals nec
essary to its performance that we find any trace of
conscious emotion or purpose concerned in it.
The appearance of sex, the development of male-
ness and femaleness was not only the birthplace of
affection, the well-spring of all morality, but an
enormous economic advantage to the race and an
absolute necessity of progress.
In it first we find any conscious longing for or ac
tive impulse toward a fellow creature. Though big
with great possibilities, it is yet as an impulse to
conduct of the narrowest sort and apparently in
many respects but little superior to the purely selfish
or nutritive appetites. Another touch is needed be
fore it becomes capable of development or of reaching
any high or noble pitch.
And this is the appearance of offspring which need
parental care.
The first appearance of reproduction, by fission or
division is chiefly a forced solution of the problem
of keeping up a sufficient proportion of absorbing
surface to a given amount of bulk. Nature s stern
ultimatum is, " Divide or die," and the amoeba di
vides. But* this is found to be a clumsy and ex
pensive process, and an improvement is introduced
by which the cell instead of cleaving to its very cen
ter simply throws out buds from the surface, the buds
become smaller and more numerous and ova are
formed, and finally the process is divided between
two separate individuals, and the sex is born.
108 THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO BAR WIN.
For a long time sex appears to be little more than
a mere economic device, a vital " division of labor, *
on the grounds of economy of expenditure and in
crease of efficiency. Indeed, this would appear to be
its chief r<51e not only in the plant-world, but through
the whole Invertebrate Sub-kingdom with the excep
tion of one great class, the Insects, and in the three
lower classes of the Vertebrates. Yet even here its
high character is shown by the wonderful beauty and
complexity of the structures developed by it, as the
colors and shapes of flowers and the incredibly elabo
rate mechanisms they possess to insure fertilization
by insects ; the rich tints and graceful contours of
the luscious fruits, the priceless berry of the wheat
and grain of the maize, the rainbow lustres of fishes.
Even in those classes where it does not reach the
level of parental affection, as in the crustaceans, the
fishes, the reptiles, it is invariably associated with
the highest development of strength and fighting-
power in the males and of intelligence in the females,
of which they are ever capable. The nocturnal
journeyings of earth-worms, the pluck and deter
mination displayed by fishes in their long and peril
ous annual migrations in search of a spawning place,
stemming the fiercest currents, leaping the mill-
weirs, forcing their way up the brooks where the
water is scarcely deep enough to cover their backs,
all that the next generation may have their start in
life under the most favorable circumstances possible,
are cases in point. And although the classic state
ment that " even an oyster may be crossed in love,"
LOVE AS A FACTOR IN EVOLUTION. 109
must be regarded as a mere figure of speech without
scientific foundation, yet his gastronomic associates,
the lobster and the crawfish, are aroused from their
usual lethargy to a tremendous pitch of pugnacity
and valor by the approach of the pairing season and
undertake quite extensive migrations under the same
influence, while the females of some of the highest
forms of crustaceans appear to exercise even a small
amount of maternal care, carrying the ova and newly
hatched young on the under surface of their caudal
appendages.
The same may be said of the fishes, the reptiles,
and the amphibia, even the stupid and sluggish newt
or salamander being galvanized into something re
sembling activity and intelligence by the approach
of the breeding-season.
Let parental affection, however, appear, and a
striking transformation begins. Intelligence not
only of a degree, but of a kind unknown before is
born. If this were confined to the mammalia alone,
it might be regarded as a mere coincidence, and
affection as merely one of the many properties of the
higher forms of life : but the fact that this emotion
produces identical results not only in a lower class of
vertebrates, the birds, but in a class of invertebrate
life, the insects, effectually negatives this claim.
Insects are in no way superior to other classes of
invertebrates in size, in vigor, or in nutritive power,
indeed they are inferior to most of their fellows in
these respects, and yet in two qualities alone, affec
tion and intelligence, they reach as it were, at one
110 THE GOSPEL, ACCORDING TO DARWIN.
bound, not only the head of their own sub-kingdom,
but also a rank almost equal to that of the very
highest forms of vertebrate life. And in nearly
every instance this extraordinary intelligence is
chiefly displayed in connection with the reproduction
of the species.
The chef-cTceuvre of the wasp, the one thing that
makes him famous, is his paper-like nest and comb,
every angle of which is calculated with mathematical
accuracy. But his ingenuity does not stop with the
construction of this exquisite hexagonal cell and the
safe deposition of the fertilized ovum at the bottom
of it. The cell is built not only large enough for the
adult larva but also for an abundant supply of food
materials for his nourishment during his develop
ment. Moreover, the wasp is a carnivorous creature,
and a supply of even freshly-killed juicy caterpillars
would putrefy long before the larva grows large
enough to devour them, so the grubs are caught and
instead of being killed are dexterously stung just
behind the head, at precisely the required point to
strike the chain of nerve-ganglia and paralyze them.
Thus they are incapable of either movement or
further development, but will continue to live and
hence u keep fresh " until master larva is ready to
make use of them. Could human ingenuity go
further? A refrigerator-car or can of corned beef is
a clumsy device by the side of this.
Bees can boast not only of the triumph of the
comb, so exquisitely constructed with a view to a
maximum of strength and containing power witli a
LOVE AS A FACTOR IN EVOLUTION. Ill
minimum of material, that not even the most elaborate
engineering calculations can improve upon it, and a
strip of wax " foundation " an inch wide and four long
and weighing a few grains can be expanded into the
bulk comb four inches square by two inches thick,
containing over a pound of honey, but also of one of
the most elaborate and yet elastic social and political
organizations that the sun shines upon. A limited
monarchy in which the rights of every citizen are
firmly upheld.
And all this is directly for the preservation and
perpetuation not of the individual but of the race.
That other bees who are still in the egg may survive
the coming winter, the earlier-born worker-bee liter-
aity and actually slaves herself to death, gathering
honey, making comb, or elaborating bee-bread. The
life-time of a worker-bee in the height of the season
is often not more than three or four days. At the
call of their queen they swarm forth in myriads to
leave their comfortable hive and brave all dangers in
starting a new colony to raise more broods. Their
celebrated weapon, the sting, while of incalculable
value for the protection of the communit}" and its
stores, is not only valueless but actually fatal to the
individual, as death inevitably follows its use. Their
most extraordinary achievement however is the power
possessed by them of actually determining the sex or
sexlessness of the larva by the food upon which they
feed it, thus literally " manufacturing " queens, or
workers, and even apparently drones, as the needs of
the hive demand. A power which places their intel-
112 THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO DARWIN.
ligence not only on a level with ours, but distinctly
above it.
Ever since the days of good King Solomon we have
been exhorted to " go to the ant " as a model of in
dustry and foresight, but these are only the smallest
of the qualities in which even human beings would
do well to take these wonderful insects as a pattern.
Not only do they, as the proverb approvingly com
ments, build houses and store up food against the
rigors of winter, but they possess a social organization
so elaborate and advanced, that they have actually
passed some of the standards, established by anthro
pologists, for the third stage of savagery or first of
barbarism, namely : " The domestication of animals
other than the dog." Several species of ants not
only capture but literally domesticate a variety of
the green plant-lice (aphides), " milking " them by
stroking them with their antennae until they yield
their drop of honey-like secretion, building stables
for them upon their favorite plants and changing
them to fresh pastures from time to time as their
needs demand. A regular dairy-farm, only with little
green cows in place of the classic red ones. They
build houses which rival our modern Chicago " sky
scrapers," ten, fifteen, and twenty stories in height,
with halls, store-rooms, sleeping-chambers, corridors,
warm southern galleries for nurseries, and royal
apartments. They go out to war, in serried ranks,
under the command of a single leader. They have
laws which are rigidly enforced and whose penalties
are promptly inflicted. All they lack is speech to
LOVE AS A FACTOR IN EVOLUTION. 113
render them well nigh our equals. As one of the
closest observers of their habits, Krapotkine, asserts :
"Mutual aid within the community, self-devotion
grown into a habit and very often self-sacrifice for the
common welfare are the rule. . . . And if the ant
stands at the very top of the whole class of insects
for its intellectual capacities ; if its courage is only
equalled by the most courageous Vertebrates, and if
its brain to use Darwin s words c is one of the
most marvelous atoms of matter in the world, per
haps more so than the brain of man, is it not due to
the fact that mutual aid has entirely taken the place
of mutual struggle in the communities of ants?"
There is just one function around which all the
activities of this wonderful people center, which is
alike the motive and the goal of all their efforts, the
care of the coming generation. For them the finest
and most spacious galleries facing to the south and
warmed by the sun are built and reserved, for them
the honey-dew of the aphis is collected, for their pro
duction and protection the whole elaborate com
munity is organized, for them the battle is fought to
the death.
Break open an ant-hill and you will find at once
that the first thought of the entire startled commu
nity is to save not themselves, but the eggs and larvae ;
the warriors rushing bravely forth to discover and
attack the enemy, while the nurses, seizing each her
charge in her mandibles, with an utter disregard for
their own lives, rush wildly hither and thither in
search of some place of safety where they may de-
114 THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO DARWIN.
posit their precious burden. In a wonderfully short
space of time every egg has been carried into some
of the uninjured galleries ; the opening hastily
blocked witli little pellets of earth, the warriors are
recalled, unless they have, much, to your sor
row, succeeded in finding your ankles in the mean
time, and the work of the community which was so
rudely interrupted goes on once more. The one
thing that lifts the ants, the bees, the wasps head
and shoulders above all their fellows is the love they
bear to their offspring. Wherever in the wide world
of organic life love is found, there also are found its
devoted servants, courage and intelligence. The
higher we rise in the scale, the more prominent does
this factor become.
The thing which most distinguishes that living,
vocal sunbeam, the bird, in his warm affection, first
for his mate, and secondly for his nestlings.
To the first he owes his matchless hues and ex
quisite shading from the liquid-fire of the humming
bird s throat to the soft silvery sheen of the turtle
dove s breast, or the underwing of the plover. To
this also he owes his wonderful gift of song which
rises as far above human speech in its power to ex
press emotion as it falls below it in its ability to con
vey ideas. No one, I think, can listen to the burst
of glad-throated melody which greets the sunrise in
May, from every copse, without feeling that the soul
of the bird comes nearer the soul of man than that
of any other of the innumerable forms of life : nay,
that in love and worship it rises far above it. And
LOVE AS A FACTOR IN EVOLUTION. 115
every shred of color, every line of pencilling, every
note of melody owes its being to the graceful rivalries
of courtship, in Philistine phrase, to sexual selection.
They are of no possible benefit to his nutrition as an
individual : on the contrary, they serve both to warn
his prey and to render him conspicuous to his
enemies. They actually mean fewer butterflies and
more breathless chases, but he needs them in his little
affaires de cceur, and behold, they are developed
and become his chief glory and only claim to dis
tinction.
And with the appearance of the offspring what an
immense amount of skill and craft and intelligence
must be developed : first there is the building of the
nest, a pyramid of Cheops in itself which must ac
curately match the bark of the old apple tree, in
whose fork it is built, like the chaffinch s, or swing
from the wind-tossed tip of a bough beyond the reach
of the craftiest snake or most active monkey, like the
oriole s, or be slung up under the eaves like a swal
low s, or woven so that it will float in a freshet like
a water-hen s, or stitched on the under side of a leaf,
" as the fern seed, invisible," like the humming
bird s or built in the center of a chevaux de frise of
thorns like the shrike s. No sooner is this finished
and the eggs laid than the period of hatching
begins, and what a tremendous developer this is of
patience and courage in the female and energy and
foraging-skill in the male. With the appearance of
the young all the aggressiveness and resources of
both parents are strained to the utmost, everything
116 THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO DARWIN.
that comes near the nest must be attacked, and fresh
food is demanded every hour of the day.
Then there is the training of the little ones to fly
and the watchful guarding of their first flutters, the
brave attacks of the father upon every foe that
approaches, or the skilful feints of the mother as
screaming and fluttering with drooping wing and
limping gait she lures the foe to pursue her and leave
her offspring to escape or hide themselves.
Bird-beauty, bird-music, and bird-intelligence have
one common root, the nest. Later on they are used
for more extensive combinations : groups, flocks,
colonies are formed for migration, for protection, nay
even for combined attack and defense.
Little groups of king-birds will attack and fiercely
pursue hawks, wagtails will positively persecute
sparrow-hawks, even tiny swallows will surround, and
by sheer force of numbers and aggressiveness, over
whelm and chase away a falcon, if it dares to come
near their nest-colony. A mere " passel o sparrers "
will take a positive delight in making the life of any
owl, that they can discover in the daytime, a burden
to him. Water-fowl upon the shores of lakes will
combine to attack and drive off falcons, ospreys and
even the eagle himself. Through mutual aid and
mutual affection, " the meek " literally have " in
herited the earth."
But it is when we reach the highest class of all,
the Mammalia or "breast" animals, that this close
relation between affection and progress becomes most
striking.
LOVE AS A FACTOR IN EVOLUTION. 117
At the very outset of his consideration of this as
pect of the struggle for existence Durwin remarks in
his clear, simple, almost matter-of-fact style, " The
individuals which took the greatest pleasure in society
would best escape various dangers ; while those who
cared least for their comrades and lived solitary
would perish in greater numbers." And this thought
though sadly overlooked or even shamefully misrep
resented by many of his so-called followers, is of
late being emphasized as it deserves. One of our
highest authorities upon the social life of animals.
Krapotkine, declares that: "Life in societies is no ex
ception in the animal world. It is the rule, the law
of nature, and it reaches its fullest development with
the higher vertebrates. Those species which live
solitary or in small families only are relatively few
and their numbers are limited. Life in societies
enables the feeblest mammals to resist, to protect
themselves from the most terrible birds and beasts of
prey ; it permits longevity ; it enables the species to
rear its progeny with the least waste of energy and
to maintain its numbers, albeit with a very slow
birth-rate. . . .
u Therefore while fully admitting that force, swift
ness, etc. . . . are qualities making the individual
the fittest under certain circumstances, we maintain
that under any circumstances sociability is the greatest
advantage in the struggle for life. . . . The fittest are
thus the most sociable animals, and sociability appears
as the chief factor in evolution both directly by secur
ing the well-being of the species while diminishing
118 THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO DARWIN.
the waste of energy, and indirectly by favoring the
growth of intelligence. . . . a
" Therefore combine, practice mutual aid. That
is the surest means of giving to each and to all the
greatest safety, the best guarantee of existence and
progress bodily, intellectual, moral. That is what
nature teaches us."
The same thought is vigorously advanced by the
brilliant biologist, Arthur Thomson, who says :
" But animals are social not only because they love
one another, but because sociality is justified of her
children. The world is the abode of the strong, but
it is also the home of the loving."
The attitude of most popular and many scientific
writers towards these " higher " qualities of ours is
truly singular. Utterly useless or actually injurious
to self-advancement, they have come into being some
how by chance and are a sort of dangerous and ex
pensive biological luxury, which man and the higher
mammals can afford to indulge in, solely by virtue of
their superior strength and intelligence. Social in
stincts and relations have sprung up, not as a means
of waging more successfully the struggle for exist
ence but as a means of escaping from it, and AVC are
gravely warned by some " evolutionist " philosophers
that we must not allow our sympathies for our fellows
too much sway over our conduct, lest we should
"promote the survival of the unfit!" And all the
while it is these very sympathies which are both the
foundation and mainspring of our present " fitness "
1 The italics are ours.
LOVE AS A FACTOR IN EVOLUTION. 119
and civilization, while love is the very creator of our
strength and intelligence, instead of their spoiled
darling. In the great group of mammals the same
rule holds as in birds and insects, that whatever spe
cies or families are solitary and unsocial in habits,
form no communities and few or brief family ties and
give birth to few offspring at a time and these re
quiring but little care, are almost invariably either
of a low grade of development, stupid and cowardly,
like the sloth, the armadillo, the ant-eater, and the
mole, or else ferocious, capable of little modification,
and of a sometimes keen but markedly limited intel
ligence, like the cat, the panther, the wolverine, and
the otter. If we were to divide the group into three
great classes, those who care little for their offspring,
or mate for a brief period only, those who are devoted
to offspring and mate but indifferent to all others of
their species, and those who cherish not only their
immediate family but also the members of their pack,
flock, or community, we should find almost every
species of any notable degree of intelligence in the
last class. And while certain members of the second
class, such as the great cats and the bears, are as in
dividuals among the most formidable and dangerous
of the entire sub-kingdom (although the gorilla, the
water-buffalo, and the wild stallion can meet any of
them on equal terms), yet they can never become
half so numerous in a given area as those of their
own family who form packs for mutual assistance,
nor do they resist extermination as long. And even
the tiger will snarlingly relinquish his kill to the
120 THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO DARWIN.
dhole- (wild dog) phalanx, while the huge grizzly
has to often give the right of way to the wolf-pack,
and the jaguar to the peccary-herd. Fierce and
powerful as are the tiger, the panther, and the grizzly
bear, they are seldom half such a serious and obsti
nate obstacle to spread of civilization or so dreaded
by settlers in a new country as the far feebler wolf,
with his pack-forming power. On the other hand,
scarcely a single mammal, excepting the cat, has been
found worthy either physically or mentally of do
mestication by man, which is not social to a high
degree.
We are apt, I think, bo forget what a vitally im
portant and incessantly acting factor in the survival
of all our larger mammals, outside of the pure flesh-
eaters, this mutual aid is. The moment, so to speak,
an animal gets big enough to be readibly visible from
some distance in the open, it must either confine it
self to thickets, swamps, and mountain-ledges, or
combine with its fellows for mutual defense. This
combining would appear to be associated more closely
than with any other single factor with the lengthen
ing of the time required for reaching maturity on the
part of the young. Most carnivora are for practical
purposes of either escape or defense mature at from
six to ten months, while most hoofed animals take
from two to five years for full development.
This naturally increases the duration of parental
care and the size and complexity of the family,
which, aided by the polygamous instincts of the
male, becomes the nucleus of a rapidly forming herd.
LOVE AS A FACTOR IN EVOLUTION. 121
The larger and more complex the latter becomes, and
the greater the intelligence required to maintain con
certed action and keep in touch with the entire mass,
while under the protection of numbers relieved from
the necessity of rapid and frequent flight, the size
and vigor of the body steadily increases until the
species becomes almost impregnable against the
attack of any carnivorous species, save and except
the fiercest and most dangerous of all, man, as was
the case with the buffalo of our Western plains.
The daily and hourly exercise of first, affection, then
intelligent sympathy, and finally courageous devo
tion is absolutely necessary to existence. Even an
animal so apparently little gifted in other respects as
the cow displays some remarkable qualities in this
regard. The hardiest Texan ranger is extremely
chary of handling or even alarming a young calf,
lest it should " blart " out its danger-cry, for the
whole herd goes simply mad with rage at once and
will attack anything that comes in their way. Such
is the watchful care extended over these little ones
that in the spring when they first begin to arrive and,
like their scarcely more chubby human counterparts,
need to sleep most of their time and are quite inca
pable of following their mothers over the considerable
area which must be covered every day in grazing,
regular creches are established for them on the sun
niest slope of the grazing valley, where they are
guarded by three or four of the sharpest-horned old
Amazons of the herd, while their mothers graze at
ease till meal-time comes. One of the prettiest
122 THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO DARWIN.
sights upon the great cattle-ranges is to suddenly
come upon a group of ten or a dozen of these little
red-and-white breathing puff-balls, fast asleep in the
grass, with their vicious-looking guards patrolling
near them, the herd grazing in the distance and a
couple of hungry coyotes gazing wistfully down from
the top of the next range of hills, hoping that some
thing may happen to distract the attention of the
guards for a minute or two. But the flaw in this
bravery and vigilance lies in its occasional incon
stancy. In horned cattle fits of rage are apt to alter
nate with equally furious and unreasoning fits of
panic, and though the cow will protect her sucking
calf under all circumstances, in the mad stampede
many a weanling and yearling falls behind the herd
and is pulled down by the hereditary foe. It is to
our noblest friend, the horse, that we must turn for
the perfection of mutual aid and civic courage.
When the alarm is sounded by the sentinel of the
herd, the horses and mares rush not away from the
danger but towards one another and rapidly form a
compact mob in the center of the valley. The colts
and yearlings are pushed into the center while the
adults form a firm ring round them, facing outward,
so that whether the snarling and disappointed pack
of the gray devils of the plains attack the regiment
in front, flank, or rear, or all three at once, they find
themselves everywhere confronted by an unbroken
rank of snapping yellow ivories and dancing iron
hoofs, driven with the force of trip-hammers, any
attack upon which will only result in a mouthful of
LOVE AS A FACTOR IN EVOLUTION. 123
their own teeth or a broken skull. It is the " human
wall " of Sempach, the hollow square of Waterloo,
in its original form and like them it can defy any foe
short of the bullet. Should a mare or colt be sur
rounded by the wolves before they can join the regi
ment, the latter moves swiftly but steadily to their
assistance led by its war-chief, the oldest and ruling-
stallion of the herd. He alone takes no part in the
formation of the circle, but trots proudly out from it
in the direction of the threatened attack and woe
betide the wolf who ventures near enough to be over
taken before he can regain the broken ground of the
nearest foot-hills. It is short shrift and no quarter
for him, and not only the big, gray timber-wolf of
our Northern plains, but even the jaguar of the
pampas, have been slain in single combat by the war
lord of the horse-herd in defense of his mares and colts.
All these faculties are, of course, developed in a
state of nature, and perhaps better exemplified in
this condition. Indeed it is the training which this
mutual co-operation has given, and alone could give,
to their intelligence which has rendered them capable
of such valuable co-operation with man in his progress.
There can be but little question but that the horse
transfers or extends to man the sentiments which he
originally felt toward the herd, while the dog simply
regards man as at least a member and possibly as a
sort of deified embodiment of the pack. Hence the
touching fidelity and self-sacrificing devotion, of
which both these noble friends of ours are capable,
the mere mention of which is enough to call up in
124 THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO DARWIN.
most of us the warmest and most grateful recollec
tions. There is no need to multiply instances, poets
have sung and philosophers have sounded their
praises in all ages, and here the relation between af
fection and other high qualities is still preserved, for
it is almost invariably the most loving who are the
most intelligent and the most courageous.
Moreover those animals, or breeds of them, that
are kept most constantly upon terms of affectionate
intimacy with their older brethren of the human
species, are those which are most distinguished for
courage, beauty, and intelligence. There is nothing
peculiarly favorable to the development of the horse
in the climate, soil, or vegetation of Arabia ; much
indeed that is unfavorable. But here, almost alone
in the world, the horse lias been made a member of
the human family, sheltered under their tents, fed
from their dishes, fondled, wept over, nay, even
prayed to in times of peril, and the result has been
not a spoiled and effeminate plaything, but the
noblest joint-product of man and nature a creature
with the swiftness of the falcon, the beauty of the
gazelle, and the courage of the lion, who will gallop
till he drops, with no other spur than the mere touch
of his master s hand. If the wild Bedaween of the
desert had never produced anything but the Arab
horse, that alone would have earned them the grati
tude of the human race. It is simply astonishing to
what extent every breed of the horse, which has
achieved a reputation outside of its own native
province, owes its best qualities to the mixture of his
LOVE AS A FACTOR IN EVOLUTION. 125
wonderful blood. Either directly or through his
descendant, the English thoroughbred, he has left his
mark all over the civilized world. The winner of the
Derby or St. Leger, the American trotter, the spirited
Barb, the Australian Waler, the plucky and wiry
broncho of our western plains, all alike are proud to
trace their pedigree back to him, and wherever his
blood is found, it still carries with it not only speed,
beauty, and endurance, but what ranks almost higher
yet, absolute devotion and indomitable courage.
Whatever man is called upon to risk his neck, to
trust his life to his horse, whether in battle, in the
hunting field, or upon the badger-riddled cattle
ranges, the Arab blood is his first choice. As a
shrewd old Yorkshire horse-dealer once expressed it
to the writer. " Your thoroughbred, sir, has always
got a leg left, no matter how nasty a place ye gets
him into, and he ll save your neck at the risk of his
The same is true of the dog, those breeds or in
dividuals which are most distinguished for intelli
gence and courage being almost invariably those that
are kept in or about the house, as trusted members
of the family. Dogs which are kept in packs or ken
nels are usually distinctly inferior in intelligence and
generally in courage. One of our most celebrated
trainers gave it, as the secret of his success, that he
got his dogs to " associate with him just as closely as
possible." This is so generally recognized by dog
fanciers that there is decided prejudice against " ken
nel-bred " dogs, who have been reared as it were by
126 THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO DARWIN.
wholesale, usually with a number of others, fed by
an attendant, and have had but little opportunity of
getting attached to anybody. In fact, fully half of
the justly vaunted intelligence of the dog depends
upon the intimacy of his association with and affec
tion for some man.
Nor is this interdependence between the civil virtues
and intelligence, by any means limited to domestic
animals. The wonderful architectural achievements
of the beaver have their origin in the closeness of his
social ties. The remarkable sagacity of the wild
elephant is matched by the firmness of his social or
ganization, while the baboon who is able to use sticks,
stones, and thorns as weapons in his warfare or as
implements in his food-getting and whose general in
telligence is so great, that it is declared by the na
tives that he knows how to talk, but won t for fear
he should be put to work, is equally remarkable for
his co-operative powers, moving to the attack or
plunder in regularly-organized bands which obey a
leader and post sentinels. These latter are not only
heeded instantly, when they give the alarm, but
several instances are recorded where they have ap
parently been tried and punished with death for
failure to warn the band of danger. When retreat
ing before a victorious enemy, if one of their number
is intercepted or captured his comrades will rush to
his rescue, or failing this, the leader lias been known
to return to his assistance single-handed.
And the case is even stronger when we come to
the highest species of all. The most striking and
LOVE AS A FACTOR IN EVOLUTION. 127
influential characteristic of every tribe of the lowest
degree of civilization is its Ishmaelitish attitude its
hand against every man, and every man s hand against
it. The thing that makes the Bushman, the Akka,
the Tierra del Fuegan a savage and keeps him so, is
not his lack of intelligence, for of this lie possesses
often a larger share than some of his brethren much
higher in the scale. It is not the unfavorable nature
of his climate or environment, nor the absence of
animals suitable for domestication, but it is simply
his inability or unwillingness to trust, not merely the
members of other tribes but the members of his own
tribe, nay, the members of his own family sufficiently
to co-operate with them in any way. Indeed, the
short-livedness and fickleness of his kindly impulses
may even prevent him from keeping and caring for
any animal long enough to domesticate it, thus de
barring him from taking the first step upward in the
social scale. Kipling, in one of those wonderful
flashes of insight into the very heart of things, which
so often illuminate his pages has epitomized this atti
tude as that of " the desert where there is always war."
The frightful indifference of the savage to human
death and suffering, not merely in respect to his
enemies, but also in his own tribe, which leads him
to squabble and fight to the death over the merest
trifle, to kill the aged in times of scarcity, to system
atically practise infanticide, and even to kill all who
are seriously wounded after a battle, or who appear
unlikely to recover from illness, is by far the most
powerful and fatal obstacle to his progress.
128 THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO DARWIN.
In the first place, this terrific waste of life, at every
pore, as it were, keeps the tribe small and weak and
absolutely prevents that pressure upon each other and
upon the means of subsistence which, as we shall
show in another chapter, is the chief stimulus to in
dustrial progress. In the second place, individual
life is rendered so short and so uncertain, that ab
solutely all the energies of man are devoted to its
mere preservation, with no time to spare for increas
ing its fulness or comfort. Thirdly, as will be shown
in the chapter on Pain all those powerful influences
for elevation, known as the natural sciences, botany,
chemistry, astronomy, etc., had their origin to a large
degree, in what could be broadly termed " medicine "
and came into being very largely through that effort
to preserve the helpless, protect the weak, and restore
the sick, which this unsocial spirit so emphatically
antagonizes. It cannot be too strongly insisted
upon that almost the whole of our power to protect
and increase the efficiency of the well grew out of
our cure of the sick. And last but not least, this at
titude of distrust and hatred absolutely prevents that
co-operation, that division of labor, without which
no substantial progress is possible. In so far as he
hates, the savage is a savage, and will remain so.
Whenever he begins to love he begins his upward
progress toward civilization at once.
In the lowest stages even the family tie was so
loose as to furnish but little foundation for the forma
tion of even the smallest group which could be united
by mutual confidence and affection. Just as soon,
LOVE AS A FACTOR IN EVOLUTION. 129
however, as this becomes more stable, a small but
wonderfully effective band is formed to serve as a
nucleus for further development. The mother of
course will always protect and befriend her child,
but it is not until the father begins to take an active
participation in the process that anything like a per
manent group can be formed. So soon as this begins
it is obvious that the father who protects his children
most vigilantly in times of danger and watches over
them most carefully in times of sickness, who shares
his last portion with them in famine, will soon collect
around him a larger and more effective family group
than that of his more indifferent neighbors, and the
advantages of " a family of tall sons " are still sung
and recognized in every primitive community from
our present Western frontier back to the times of
Joshua.
The family group which follows out this line of
conduct most persistently would reap cumulative
beneficial effects with each coming generation. By
this time it will have become large enough, not only
effectively to protect itself from the smaller groups
by which it was surrounded, but also to be regarded
by outsiders as a desirable body to become connected
with by marriage, or in some other way. This would
soon give it a pre-eminence in the tribe to such an
extent, that its principle of conduct would become a
rule for the majority of its tribal connection, and this
again, of course, would result in a still wider spread
of mutual confidence and the possibilities of and
practise in intelligent co-operation. Thus the living
130 THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO DARWIN.
snow-ball would grow as it rolled, until the principle
of co-operation having become instinctive in its mem
bers not only as regards all members of the family,
of the clan, and the tribe, the same spirit would reach
out towards some of its neighboring tribes and a con
federation would be formed.
By this time the tribe would have grown in mass
and in wealth, to such a degree that division of labor
would not only have become possible but absolutely
necessary. Animals would have been domesticated,
weapons would be made by one man, clothing by an
other, ornaments by another ; some rude knowledge
of the medical virtues of plants and mineral earths
would have been obtained, cookery would have made
some progress, resulting in the possession of pottery
and other utensils and behold, the community is
no longer savage, but has reached the next stage,
that of barbarism. The same cohesiveness, which
has made them strong for defense, has also made
them powerful for attack and the conquest of neigh
boring tribes ; or the occupation of new territories
can now be attempted. This, by throwing upon
them new demands both of climate, of methods of
warfare, methods of agriculture, the necessity of
overcoming rivers, mountains, swamps, and other
natural obstacles, will stimulate the growth of the
mechanical arts in every way, and the confederacy
will rise rapidly in the scale. But even yet it is
necessary that this same tolerant temper continue to
be manifested. If its career is merely one of invasion
and plunder or of extermination, its spread, though
LOVE AS A FACTOR IN EVOLUTION. 131
it may be brilliant, will be of but short duration, like
that of the Huns and the Turks. But if, however,
its treatment of conquered peoples is fair and honor
able and they are given something of the rights and
privileges which its own members so dearly prize,
then the confederacy will rapidly fuse itself into a
nation ; its progress will not be merely geographical
but political, and its tides will swell toward the
highest goal of national progress.
Even having reached this stage, no matter how
great and powerful the nation may be, so long as it
fails to accord to the subjects of other nations the
same substantial rights and privileges which it
cherishes so zealously for its own citizens, it cannot
be regarded, in the full sense of the term, as civilized.
Even to-day the most practical and striking division,
between the civilized and uncivilized nations of the
globe, is made by the test-question as to whether
another nation can afford to permit her citizens to be
tried anywhere, unreservedly, in its courts of law.
Only a few years ago, for instance, this question was
being seriously debated by the European powers in
regard to Japan. The hope of all of us is, that that
day is not far distant when this confidence in and
affection for our brother man shall have spread
throughout a still wider circle, so that not merely
may individuals group themselves into families,
families into clans, clans into tribes, tribes into
confederations, and confederations into nations, but
that the great nations of the world may group them
selves together into a vast confederation of human-
132 THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO DARWIN.
ity, all of whose members shall be both fellow-citizens
and brethren. Instead of being a mere episode in
the march of civilization, least of all opposed to its
dominant factors, affection, with the confidence which
is begotten of it alone, has been the very key-note of
the process. And while the ties of blood and a
pardonable pride of family may perhaps bias my judg
ment, yet it does seem to me, that the one thing which
more than any other has been at the bottom of the
wonderful colonizing and empire-forming feats of the
Anglo-Saxon, whether of Lesser or Greater England,
has been his deep-rooted tendency toward fair, honor
able, and even kindly treatment of the weaker races,
with whom he has come in contact during his spread.
Stern and unsympathetic he has often been, selfish
and covetous of land or gold, but it has seldom been
that an appeal to the inherent principles of human
rights, a plea for justice, has fallen upon his ears
unheeded. Although not always loved, he is in
variably trusted by all with whom he comes in con
tact, even those who have most bravely and bitterly
fought against him.
COURAGE THE FIRST VIRTUE. 133
CHAPTER VII.
COURAGE THE FIRST VIRTUE.
NOWHERE is the divergence between the Old Gos
pel and the New more decided than at this point.
The attitude of the Synoptics and of " John " is
equally unmistakable and deplorable. The " king
doms of the world and the glory of them " are in the
complete possession of Satan, the sole expectation of
the believer is that " in this world ye shall have
tribulation only." The world " hateth " the Christian,
and the " Prince of this world " is his bitterest enemy ;
hence both improvement and opposition are out of
the question, in the very nature of things, and a policy
of absolute non-resistance and patient endurance is
his only resource. " My kingdom is not of this world,
else would my servants fight," " Resist not evil,"
" Blessed are the meek," " Submit yourselves unto
the powers that be," are but a few of the scores of
forms, under which the doctrine is reiterated again and
again, through all the Gospels.
It lias been accepted as a formal article of belief
by the Church in almost every age, but fortunately
for the race has never been lived up to by any of her
Western branches ; indeed only a few small and
eccentric sects, like the Quakers and the Mennonites,
134 THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO DARWIN.
have even attempted to reduce it to practise. And
yet its influence has been most disastrous, for it has
in every age had the double effect of casting a para
lyzing blight over the aggressive activities of the
noblest and purest minds, and serving as an excuse
for indolent and cowardly submission to injustice, or
toleration of abuses, by the baser sort of natures. In
its scheme of the virtues there is absolutely no place
for courage, except in the passive forms of endurance,
patience under persecutions, continuing " steadfast
unto the end." Christ repeatedly compares himself
to a shepherd and his followers to his sheep, his
lambs, his flock. And as Paul Cams aptly remarks
in his " Homilies of Science," " This comparison was
sufficient to give a crown of glory to the sheep.
Christians forget that similes remain similes ; that
they do not cover the truth in all respects but at
one or two points only. And thus it happened that
the weakness of the sheep, its simplicity, nay, its
very stupidity became an ideal of moral goodness
and Christian virtue. Humanity, Christian and
non-Christian, is under the influence of the sheep
allegory still. . . . Let us beware of the ethics of
ovine morality." Paul s celebrated list of the
fruits of the spirit " contains nothing approaching
courage except " long-suffering." Consequently
Christianity was an almost complete failure as a
factor in the world s progress, until it was grafted
upon races whose irresistible vigor and sturdy com-
bativeness made a fighting religion out of it, in spite
of its doctrines. Indeed, for everything in it which
COURAC;K TMK I-MKST VIRTUE. 135
makes for libert} , justice, and progress it is vastly
more indebted to the Teuton and the Celt, than they
to it. AVhen the stern old Puritan wanted a fighting
text, he was driven perforce to the otherwise despised
Old Testament with its pathetically irrelevant "smit-
ings of Amalek," and hewings of Agag in pieces.
And this omission accounts for a large share of the
alleged negativeness and passivity, or as it has some
times been expressed, the " feminineness " of Chris
tianity, its fatal substitution first of being, then of
believing, for doing. The sin which drove the her
mit into the desert and the monk into the shades of
the cloister was cowardice, and the selfishness born of
it. And this again left nothing in the body of all
its teaching to prevent an abject and cowardly sub
mission to the fiat of an irresponsible and often irra
tional tyrant, for fear of unpleasant consequences in
this life and the next, being made the chief motive of
human action ; as in much of our modern evangelicism.
even to-day.
Of the passive sort of courage there was a splendid
abundance among its adherents, as the superb record
of its " noble army of martyrs," witnesses in letters
of fire and blood upon every page of its history . But
of the active sort, in the way of aggressive, reforma
tive action of any description, there was a deplorable
lack until it had been assimilated and supplemented
by the sturdy Teuton and Slav soul, in Luther, Wyclif,
Huss, and their spiritual ancestors and descendants.
And while no one would be further from wishing in
any way to detract from the richly deserved glory of
136 THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO DARWIN.
the martyr s crown, yet iii strict justice, it must be
reluctantly admitted that sadly too much of the
endurance and fortitude displayed, was from fear of
worse consequences and more lasting punishment in
the future life, should recantation be made, than from
pure love of the truth or unwillingness to be false to
one s own convictions. We repeatedly meet with
the statement by the martyr himself, as a final argu
ment of the highest and most unanswerable nature,
that he dared not refuse to do or say such and such
a thing, however perilous, or deny such and such a
vital tenet, lest he endanger the salvation of his own
soul thereby. And with a pathetic perversion of the
mystic words of the Master," it is better to enter into
life maimed, than having both hands to be cast into
hell," sufferers have actually sustained themselves
and each other in the torments of the stake with the
reminder of how much preferable these brief agonies
are to ages of eternal torture. From Paul to George
Fox, one of the chief burdens of the meditations of
the saints has ever been, " Woe is unto me if I preach
not the Gospel ! " All honor to their dauntless
bravery, upon whatever it was based, whether from
or in spite of their creed, but more deaths upon the
field of battle, fighting against oppression, and fewer
at the stake would have been more to the advantage
of humanity at large. It was magnificent, but it
wasn t progress, and there is little reason to lament
the decay of the martyr spirit. Nor can it be said
that their protest took this form from sheer lack of
strength or numbers to make any other hopeful, for
COURAGE THE FIRST VIRTUE. 137
at a very early date the heads of the primitive church
were able to say in a petition to the Emperor Julian
asking for liberty of belief and practise, that if it
were not for their being forbidden to take up the
sword, they could seriously endanger his throne, so
large a proportion of his subjects did they form.
In fact if we look into the matter more closely we
shall find that not only was active courage, of any
sort, not adequately recognized by the four Gospels,
but that they positively discouraged such frames of
mind in the tremendous stress which they laid upon
faith and submission. So that gradually any sort of
self-assertion or initiative came to be regarded as
actually sinful. And it needs only to be mentioned
what a calamity to human welfare this accursed,
intentional cowardice of the good has been and is.
It has robbed humanity of the better half of the in
fluence of its best and noblest elements and has done
more to give reality to the conception of the poet,
" Right forever on the scaffold, wrong forever on the
throne," than all other influences put together. It
alone is chiefly responsible for the fact, that in every
age, a mere handful of bold, unscrupulous rascals
have succeeded in terrorizing and even oppressing
and abusing half a nation of well-meaning but timid
and irresolute good people. Nor can we flatter our
selves that we have escaped its influence yet, for it is
to-day, to mention one field alone, the curse of mod
ern politics, in which we have the astounding and
humiliating spectacle of entire municipalities, states,
nay, even the nation of honorable, intelligent citizens,
138 THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO DARWIN.
not merely ruled but robbed and insulted by a mere
corporal s guard of the most contemptible curs and
cads imaginable, known as "bosses," whose sole source
of power is their unparalleled " nerve " and activity,
plus the unspeakable cowardice and indolence of the
" better classes."
As to the real value of courage, active courage,
that of the soldier rather than of the martyr, too much
can hardly be said, and yet very little is needed. It
would be conceded at once as one of the absolutely
indispensable conditions of progress. Willingness to
risk the untried, to run the gauntlet of danger, for
the sake of possible advantage, to imperil safety for
the chance of improvement, is a factor which is always
presupposed in the accomplishment of any upward
step. And seldom is it lacking " under Nature."
Although primarily a self-regarding virtue, it is in its
ultimate results and often directly, a race-regarding
one also, and any individual s first duty to himself
and to his kind is to be brave. He may get through
life decently and even honorably lacking any other
one virtue, but without this, never. No other virtue
is of real effect without it. The chief value, both
objective and subjective, of love lies in the bravery
which it develops in behalf or defense of its object.
The supreme test and criterion of any virtue is
whether it develops courage or not. Love must ex
press itself in deeds of devotion involving risk of
injury or loss, " faith " by " works " of the same
character, patience by fortitude under trial. In
short, it comes nearer to being the one element,
COURAGE THE FIRST VIRTUE. 139
according to whose presence and degree we call an
action " virtuous," the one great criterion of morality,
than any other quality or grace. It is no mere coinci
dence that the primitive meaning of " virtue " is
" bravery," which again is by further analysis that
which distinguishes " a man " (virtus vir). Neither
nature nor man, neither Church nor State, biology or
morals has any use for the coward. Conversely our
chief criterion in judging of the nature and degree of
a crime or vice, is the degree to which courage is
absent from it. The essence of cruelty, for instance,
lies not so much in the infliction of suffering, for that
may be absolutely necessary and blameless, but in its
infliction under such circumstances, that there is no
balancing risk of possible equivalent suffering on the
part of the inflictor, as in the case of women and
children, or of unarmed or prostrate foemen. One of
the weightiest considerations in determining the
murderous or justifiable character of a homicide is
the amount of risk run by the aggressor, as to the
strength, weapons, and warning of his opponent ; in
short, the amount of cowardice displayed by him.
While the essence and only ascertainable "sin" of
the commonest of offenses, lying, is its cowardice, the
desire to gain an advantage, inflict an injury, which
we dare not effect by open means, or to escape a pun
ishment or avoid a loss which we haven t the courage
to face squarely or submit to. In fact, there is
scarcely a crime or vice into which it does not enter
as an important element.
And the instinctive respect and admiration for
140 THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO DARWIN.
courage which we find everywhere, fully corrobo
rates our view of its supreme value, and importance.
It is not merely respected because it makes its
possessor formidable, but it provokes a spontaneous
and irresistible respect and even love for its own
sake, which is utterly unparalleled by any other
virtue or grace except beauty. We do homage and
reverence to bravery in a man upon the same sort
of irresistible impulse as we worship beauty and
purity in a woman. It is one of the great pass
words of nature. One touch of it unites all condi
tions, all beliefs, and all ages in an instinctive throb
of sympathy. How a brave deed stirs us in spite of
ourselves, whether in friend or foe, black or white,
man or beast ! Kipling has well voiced this univer
sal sympathy in his stirring refrain :
" For there is neither East nor West,
Border nor breed nor birth,
When two strong men stand face to face,
Though they come from the ends of the earth."
It has been the never-failing theme of song and story
through all the ages from the "dark wrath of
Achilles " and the " Arma virumque cano " to the
Charge of the Light Brigade.
Courage has no need to sue for a place in the list of
virtues of any religious code. It has a religion of its
own, whose sacred books are the whole heroic litera
ture of the world, and whose worshipers include the
entire human family. In our heart of hearts we feel
and know it to be the supreme virtue. Not even love
COURAGE THE FIRST VIRTUE. 141
takes precedence of it, for this without courage would
be as dead as " faith without works." To dare to be
true to ourselves, to our highest conviction, no mat
ter what comes of it this is our crowning glory.
Nothing has ever struck a deeper chord of response
in every true, manly soul, than Henley s lyric :
" Out of the dark that covers me
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul."
Courage, sheer, dauntless, inexhaustible, was the
supreme glory of Calvary, the one thing which all true
hearts have ever worshiped and will ever worship
as divine. And the more so as they regard Jesus of
Nazareth as man rather than God. Rightly has the
Church ever insisted upon the supreme importance
of the death of Christ. Without it his life had made
no lasting impression upon the heart of the world.
The profound simplicity of his moral precepts, the
spotless purity of his life, the sweetness and gentle
ness of his nature, would have won the admiration
and respect of the student, the philosopher ; but it
was the striking combination with all these graces of a
high-souled courage, which any iron-gloved fighting-
man might have envied, a courage which would not
fight but scorned to flee, that has compelled the love
and reverence of the entire Western world. Sooner
than surrender one iota of his convictions, sooner
than delay a moment longer the proclaiming of that
reign of love, justice, and peace which was literally
142 THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO DA II WIN.
a " kingdom of heaven " he deliberately dared and
unflinchingly sufferred a death of shame and torture.
All risk of which might have been completely
avoided by ceasing to preach, or by an hour s mid
night flight beyond Jordan. But from his fearless,
sensitive soul " this cup could not pass " in any such
fashion. And to the spotless courage of his love the
whole world bows in reverence, and shall bow as long
as humanity endures.
Wherefore the Church, being vindictive and
cowardly, slew him, as she has done his memory
scores of times since, and is doing to-day. For ob
vious reasons, she has never approved of minds of
this type, who cannot be driven even by the certainty
of future damnation, and besides burning and mas
sacring all such, whenever she dared, she has osten
tatiously thrust forward into the front rank of the
virtues the more lactylike graces of love, faith, and
meekness. Hence the necessity felt by men, in all
ages, of having a code of their own as to courage,
honor, justice, etc., outside of the standards of the
Church.
And while this code has generally tacitly accepted
the stigma placed upon it, of being built upon simply
" carnal pride," and " worldly ambition," it has
usually been equal and often superior to the ecclesi
astical, and deserves formal recognition as a moral
source and sanction. In fact, the one-sided " gospel
of love " needs to be supplemented by the gospel of
courage. Love as a motive and the Golden Rule as
a principle of action are of the highest value in all
COURAGE THE FIRST VIRTUE. 143
cases in which they apply, i. e., in man s relations to
his fellow-men. But in the wide range of his re
lations to the great forces and movements of the
universe, between him and the gods, or the fates, or
the times, they simply have no bearing. But there
is one principle which is always to be relied upon,
even here, one beacon whose light never falters,
even in the wildest storm, one rock to which a man
can cling through all the fury of the elements though it
be with clenched teeth and bleeding hands, and that
is the courage that is in him.
Never has a deeper reaching, truer precept of hu
man conduct been laid down than in Kipling s won
drous refrain :
" Whatever comes
Or does not come,
We must not be afraid."
This and this only will carry a man through the
blackest night and most furious war of the elements.
It may not be much " consolation," but it is all there
is, and it does remain as a living principle of action
and a reality when everything else has become an
empty form of words. So long as a man is true to
this faith, all is well ; let him be false to it, and
neither Sinai nor Mecca nor Calvary can save him.
If there be an " unpardonable sin," a " sin against
the Holy Ghost which shall not be forgiven," it is
cowardice.
144 THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO DARWIN.
CHAPTER VIII.
THE STRENGTH OF BEAUTY.
IF there be anything in the universe which is uni
versally regarded as weak, fragile, and incapable of
protecting itself, it is beauty. Beauty is the wing of
the butterfly, the petal of the flower, which shrivels
at a touch or a breath, and can only be preserved by
packing in down or covering with a glass case ; how,
then, can it be said to have any connection with
" strength ? " Moreover, it is essentially transitory,
evanescent, here to-day, gone to-morrow, like the
bloom upon the peach, or the blush of the rose, and
what strength can there be without stability ? Nay,
so superficial and so fleeting is it that we are gravely
warned against it by moralists of all creeds as some
thing positively deceitful, a snare and a delusion to
those who permit themselves to gaze upon it with
pleasure. In short, nothing could be more univer
sally and unanimously discredited officially, and yet
and yet it drags everybody and everything at its
chariot wheels, including the moralist himself.
By a strange inconsistency we decry it, and yet we
desire it above all things. Which is genuine and
well founded, our instinctive attraction to it, or our
distrust of it? The former by all means, the latter
THE STRENGTH OP BEAUTY. 145
is but a survival of the priestly distrust of everything
in nature. From a naturalistic standpoint we do not
hesitate to assert that beauty is one of the strongest
and holiest influences in the world. It is nature s
stamp of approval, her certificate of strength, of
wholesomeness, and of purity. Whenever an object
or organism reaches a certain degree of perfection,
beauty inevitably results.
That beauty is a mark and sign of strength and
vigor, needs but little illustration or defense. Of all
that family of giants, the great elemental forces, the
storm, the flood, the frost-king, midnight with its
terrors, the avalanche, the forest fire, none can
for a moment compare in strength with the sweet
golden sunlight, the loveliest and the strongest thing
in the world. And it is a singular coincidence that
that metal which was first prized solely on account
of its golden line, wearing the colors of the sun-god,
as it was believed, has since been proved by the uni
versal experience of the race, to be the toughest and
most indestructible of them all, not only the most
beautiful but one of the most useful and most valu
able of the metals.
Next to the glamour of the sunshine, the most
charming, the most grateful thing to the eye of
man is the sweet green of the grass, as it robes
the hillsides, and carpets the meadows, or gems the
lawn. Nothing could appear more fragile, more
exquisite than its host of tiny spears, rippling before
every breeze, and shriveling at the touch of the frost.
" To-day it is to-morrow it is cast into the oven,"
146 THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO DARWIN.
and yet its march is as irresistible as that of an army
with banners and its lifetime longer than that of
the granite rocks. It pushes itself everywhere that
a patch of soil, the thickness of paper, is to be found,
and tiny tho it is, it slowly but surely strangles the
giant weeds one after the other : the nettle, the bur
dock, the tare, nay, even the thorn and the young
oak or maple. Gentlest and loveliest of the herbs of
the field, it is also the most irresistible, while without
it the human race could not exist a single generation.
Literally " All flesh is grass," in a far wider sense
than the one intended by the psalmist.
In the animal kingdom illustrations of this rela
tionship abound. Among the fishes, for instance,
any artistic eye can at once pick out in an aquarium
the active, vigorous, courageous fishes, those that will
fight to the death, " game " as the angler emphatically
calls them, simply by the sheen of their scales, and
the graceful, willowy curves of their outlines.
Take the silvery, crimson-spangled trout, the glit
tering salmon, the steel-barred mackerel, and the
gorgeous muskallonge, and contrast them with the
yellow cat-fish, the clumsy carp, the slimy eel and
the flabby cod, and comment is unnecessary; no need
to put them on the end of a line to see which is the
most vigorous.
Walk out into the open country and watch our
feathered cousins as they flit or swoop about on their
various errands and see if the swiftest and strongest
will not pick themselves out by beauty either of color
or form. There goes into that flowering shrub one of
THE STRENGTH OF BEAUTY. 147
those winged gems, a humming-bird, looking like a
flying green electrie spark with a feathered dynamo
attached. A drop of pure beauty, and yet no steam-
engine of ten times his bulk could begin to do his
work, and even the lordly eagle would be utterly in
capable of keeping himself suspended in his fashion
the livelong day. Compare the iris-hued neck and
vivid colors of the swift-flying pigeon and ringdove
with the dull colors and pudgy forms of the short-
flying hedge-birds, the sparrow, the robin, the wren.
What a difference between the bright colors and
graceful lines of the sparrow-hawk and the somber
tints and shapeless mass of the screech-owl, between
the superb eagle and the disgusting vulture.
Among quadrupeds the rule still holds. The ac
cepted emblems of strength, of ferocity, of fleetness
are the horse, the tiger, the deer, and the} are all
three the most striking types of beauty which can
well be found. On the other hand, the recognized
types of feebleness, of stupidity, and of slowness are
the sheep, the ass, the sloth-bear, and here again the
eye alone would promptly distinguish between the two
groups. They look just what they are. Even in our
own species, the superiority from a purely artistic
standpoint of the Zulu over the Hottentot, the Arab
over the Negro, the Anglo-Saxon over the Tasrnanian
is as marked as from a physical and an intellectual one.
In fact, in the bird or animal world, beauty must
be strong and fleet to defend itself against, or escape
from, the attention which it inevitably attracts and
the desire which it excites.
148 THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO DARWIN.
The second thing that beauty stands for in nature s
picture-writing is health and wholesomeness. Ruskin
in a most brilliant passage has asserted the holiness
of color, declaring it is a sign of sweetness and purity
wherever found. And the Fifth Gospel emphatically
supports his contention. The difference in signifi
cance between the clear, deep, sparkling blue of the
cloudless sky with its promise of warmth and sun
light, of soft zephyrs and gentle dews, and that of the
black, jagged storm-cloud or the dull, leaden pall
which heralds the pitiless November rain is noticed
by the merest child.
Take a handful of wet clay from the ruts of a coun
try road in winter, and could anything be more unat
tractive, more depressing, more hopelessly useless ?
And yet, fuse that clay again and again in the cru
cible, each time rejecting the dross, subject it to high
pressure and keep on refining until an absolutely
pure, silicate of aluminium is reached, with every
crystal of typical shape, and behold, instead of the
muddy lump a clear, sparkling, blue gem of almost
diamond hardness and value the sapphire. Just as
soon as absolute purity is reached, its " hall-mark "
beauty appears, and with it hardness and value.
Take a lump of dull black, grimy coal, and simply
refine it to its purest possible form, and behold, the
diamond with its dazzling rays. Cover the fresh,
green, wholesome grasses of the river-bottom by the
muddy waters of the June freshet and you have in
their place a reeking coat of slime, poisoning the
whole air with its malarial vapors, and as offensive to
THE STRENGTH OF BEAUTY. 149
both eye and nostril in its decay as it was attractive
in its bloom. Let loose a bevy of children in a half-
wild garden copse and they will come back with their
little arms and chubby fists filled with roses and lilies,
and stained with strawberries, leaving untouched
with almost unerring instinct the nettles, the night
shades, and the toadstools.
The vast majority of edible and wholesome fruits
are bright and attractive in coloring while the poison
ous berries and fungi are usually dull and pale, if not
actually repulsive in hue.
Nine-tenths of the bright-colored berries and fruits
of our hedge-rows and copses are either edible or harm
less ; popular superstition to the contrary notwith
standing. Even in those families of plants which have
poisonous members the color-line is the line of safety.
Take, for instance, the Solatium family, and we have,
on the one hand, the crimson globe of the tomato and
the coral berries of scarlet solanum, both harmless
and refreshing and on the other hand, the dull-
purple berries of the deadly nightshade with their
leaden murderous hue, and the sickly, sallow, green
ish-white of the poisonous potato-apple. Even in the
tropics it is comparatively seldom that the traveler
is lured to his destruction by the brilliant and se
ductive colors of strange fruits, although the general
impression given by romantic literature is that the
colors are there mainly for that special purpose. To
such an extent has this theological prejudice been
carried that a species was practically invented for the
purpose of supporting it, and marvelous accounts are
150 THE GOSPEL ACCOKDING TO DARWIN.
gravely related by the early Jesuit missionaries of a
so-called " Upas tree," with gorgeously attractive
yellow and crimson fruit and shining, green leaves
but so intensely poisonous that not only was the mere
taste of its fascinating fruit rapidly fatal, but even
the odor of the tree itself, so that it was dangerous
to sleep or even lie down under its shade. It is
needless to say that while every region which it was
declared to inhabit has been thoroughly explored, no
such tree as the Upas or anything resembling it has
ever been discovered by botanists, and yet this pre
cious parable has been so industriously preached from
the pulpit as a moral lesson upon the " deceitfulness
of beauty," that the name of this imaginary tree has
become a household word and its Borgia-like reputa
tion has done much to encourage, if not actually to
cause that distrust of beauty which is so firmly rooted
in the popular mind.
In the animal kingdom the same rule holds, for
while great beauty is often associated with ferocity,
yet this latter is only occasional, and the habitual
murderers, the professional assassins and liers-in-wait,
like the alligator, the rattlesnake, the puff-adder, and
the shark, bear the brand of Cain on every inch of
their surface in their dull, muddy, blotchy colors,
uncouth or hideous shapes, and general repulsive ness
of appearance.
Further than this the physiologist and the biolo
gist unite in asserting the sweeping dictum " No life
without color " ! In the plant world the universal
emerald coloring-substance, chlorophyll, is not only
THE STRENGTH OF BEAUTY. 151
the beauty but the very life-essence of the tissues.
It is the powerful wizard through whose spells alone
can the sun-god be conjured up to furnish the energy
which we terra u vital " and pile granule upon proto
plasmic granule and cell upon cell. Life is simply
embodied sunlight and must be beautiful like its
source. The life-essence of the animal organism is
ruby-red and its presence or absence is a well-known
sign of health or of disease. We speak familiarly of
" the ruddy hue of health " and the pale and sickly
cast of delicacy or disease. The ashy cheek of the
consumptive, the muddy, earthy hue of the skin in
kidney disease or cancer, the sallow, saffron tints of
jaundice, the sickly green of anemia, speak for them
selves to any eye that is not color-blind. The color
ing of the healthy skin, hair, and eye is fresh, warm,
and vivid ; the tints of disease of every sort, of gan
grene, of ulceration,of suffocation, the hues of death
and decomposition, are dull, cold, and ghastly. Filth
and famine, pestilence and decay, are all alike, either
colorless or repulsive in hue. " The pestilence that
walketh in darkness " is in its appropriate environ
ment.
Browning goes not a whit too far when he de
clares :
" If you get beauty and naught else beside,
You get about the best thing God invents."
Beauty is God s own trade-mark, and they that bear
it not in their foreheads, be they cowled inquisitor or
filthy fakir, colorless nun, or sexless and shapeless
152 THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO DARWIN.
monk, sadly-sober Puritan or harlequin Salvationist,
haggard and sallow-cheeked Mammon-worshiper or
flat-chested and bespectacled apostle of " Culture,"
are to that extent none of His. And yet not a
few of His avowed children hold it a thing to be
rigidly avoided in their dress, persons, and even sur
roundings. " Beauty is deceitful and favor is vain "
is their cry. This ascetic denial of the holiness of
beauty has led to as sad excesses as even its licen
tious deification in the Attic decadence.
So far we have been mainly considering beauty of
color, as an index; but when we come to regard
beauty of form, its significance is at once even more
obvious and striking. The chief element in beauty
of outline is symmetry, and symmetry simply means
balance, equipoise, efficiency, and generally either
speed or strength. The second important element is
the curve, and the curve essentially denotes elas
ticity, movement, vigor.
A thoroughbred race-horse can almost invariably
be picked out of a mob of ordinary horses, simply by
the long and graceful curves of his neck, loin, and
quarters, and the general beauty and symmetry of
his figure. That beauty of form is usually associated
with great speed, strength, or intelligence, and gener
ally with all three among the lower animals, will be
readily admitted, but that the same rule holds true in
our own species, even in these over-civilized days,
will be equally promptly doubted, if not denied.
And yet I venture to assert that a careful study of
the elements which make for beauty in the human
THE STRENGTH OF BEAUTY. 153
body as a whole and in its various parts, will amply
prove this position.
Take the highest form of beauty of which our
bodies are capable, the grace of carriage, of bearing,
the poetry of motion, and it essentially consists of
and depends upon the rippling, springy vigor of
muscle, combined with the broad, deep chest of good
lung-power, the thin flanks of endurance, the wide
hips and well-rounded thighs of weight-carrying form,
the straight back held in place by the powerful bow
string of loin-muscles. The woman who possesses
the exquisite charm of a graceful bearing, the man
who " carries himself well," will be found in nine
cases out of ten to be possessed of distinctly greater
strength, speed, or endurance than their less attractive
sisters and brothers of equal weight, age, and train
ing. We sometimes imagine that the tedious " set
ting-up drill " of all systems of military training is
mainly for the purpose of giving the lines of the regi
ment a uniformly erect appearance upon parade,
chiefly a matter of display, but this is far from the
truth. On the contrary, it is insisted upon so invari
ably because the experience of countless generations
lias shown that the elements which make up an erect,
" soldierly " bearing are the very ones which indicate
the development of the highest possible degree of
vigor, of speed, and endurance.
The same will be found true of the various regions
and parts of the body. We will begin with a region
where the standards are supposed to be entirely at
variance, the waist-line, whose flowing curves from
154 THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO DARWIN.
arm-pit to hip are rightly regarded as forming the
chief beauty of the trunk-outline. Fashion and
popular taste demand simply a rapid inward slope to
as small a waist as possible, regardless of all other
elements of the curve, which breaks abruptly below
into a clumsy, shelf-like projection. Physiology and
hygiene denounce this as unhealthy and crippling.
Beauty and health appear to be at loggerheads here.
But it is only with a false ideal of beauty that there
is any conflict. Call in the artist, the anatomist to
decide the dispute, and he will instantly side with
the physiologist. The ideas of " beauty " of the
fashion-plate, the modiste, and Mrs. Grundy are often
widely different from those of the artist, the archi
tect, the naturalist, and it is with the latter only that
we are concerned. We may well paraphrase Madame
Roland and exclaim : " Oh Beauty, what crimes are
committed in thy name ! " In the vast majority of
these conflicts between beauty and common sense the
fault lies in a false ideal of beauty. The ideal waist
of the artist is that of the Venus de Milo, and every
line of it fulfils to perfection the demands of the
hygienist for the highest lung-power combined with
ease and vigor of movement.
Another similar instance of conflict between grace
and efficiency is that between the popular and
hygienic ideals of a beautiful foot. These differ
widely indeed. The popular demand in a feminine
foot is that it shall be a narrow-pointed, elongated
body, curved, or, more accurately, humped into a
nearly horseshoe-shaped arch, the pillars of which are
STRENGTH 0# BEAtrTV. 155
within a few inches of eaeli other and consist of the
compressed tips of the inner toes and a high, narrow
heel brought forward almost directly under the center
of gravity. Its functions as an organ of support and
locomotion are ruthlessly disregarded, and instead of
a scries of long, low, graceful arches it is distorted
into the resemblance of a link of sausage pointed at
one end, or a banana in convulsions.
The physician, the skilled pedestrian denounce it
as deformed, useless, painful, and almost disabled,
and again the artist cordially unites in their attack
and demands the very same outlines that they do.
The plan of the healthy, natural foot is an ex
quisite combination of arches, one long and low from
the heel to the balls of the toes, the other short and
high crossing this at right angles a little in front of
the ankle joint. These are composed mainly of a
number of wedge-shaped bones, but there is little
that is " bony " or rigid about them, as their form is
mainly preserved by the tension of three muscles of
the leg, one of whose tendons runs bowstring-fashion
from pillar to pillar, while the other two attach them
selves to both the upper and under surface of their
keystones in a most ingenious manner, if we may
use such a term with becoming reverence. Thus the
weight of the body is naturally supported upon the
intersection of two graceful, yielding, living suspen
sion arches hung upon elastic cables of muscle, which
by their expansion and contraction give a beautiful,
springy elasticity to the gait. But in order to do
this they must, like all other springs, expand, so that
156 THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO DARWIN.
the foot ought to become markedly both longer and
wider when weight is placed upon it. For this
change in form the modern " pretty " shoe makes
absolutely no adequate provision, and not only this,
but by throwing a ridiculous peg-shaped heel far for
ward, to give an appearance of shortness to the foot,
the longitudinal arch is completely broken, the
weight thrown directly upon the sensitive instep, and
the center of gravity of the whole body disturbed.
The elasticity of the gait is destroyed, just as if a
block of wood had been wedged between the flanges
of a carriage-spring.
The physiologist demands a long, low, gently arch
ing slope from heel to toes, with a broad, graceful,
fan-like expansion across the ball of the foot, and
this is precisely the form which has been immortal
ized by Du Maurier in " les beaux pieds de Trilby"
Mechanically the human foot is one of the most ex
quisitely adjusted, effective, and enduring instru
ments in the world, it will run down and tire out
any hoof, pad, or paw that moves. Artistically for
beauty of outline, harmony of curves, dimples and
grace of movement it is equally unsurpassed. Here
again beauty and strength go hand in hand, and
fashionable deformity and feebleness.
The beauty of finely-moulded shoulders and
rounded arms and tapering waist is dependent not
upon the form of the bones nor even upon the
amount of adipose or fatty tissue mere plumpness
is not beauty, but upon the live contour and rippling
grace of muscle.
THE STRENGTH OF BEAUTY. 157
So much so is this the case, that it is probable that
our decollete* form of evening dress has in spite of
the denunciations heaped upon it by both the mor
alist and the medical faculty been a most powerful
influence in elevating the standard of vigor and
improving the physique of the women of our better
classes.
As for beauty of complexion, although universally
decried as only " skin deep," in its natural and only
truly attractive form, it forms one of the best and
most reliable indices of health and vigor. It may be
imitated, but no paints, cosmetics, or local " treat
ments " of any sort can possibly reproduce the rich,
warm, vivid depth of coloring, the translucent,
creamy whiteness, and the velvety gloss of the sur
face, which is as absolutely dependent upon pure
blood and springy muscle as a red June rose is upon
its vigorous stem and roots in a fertile soil. A fine
complexion instead of a mere surface-finish is the
exquisite blossom of health and purity throughout
the entire body and literally "goes to bone," as its
counterpart, " ugliness," is proverbially declared to
do. An artificial complexion usually deceives no
body but its wearer.
In that important realm of decorative art, dress,
the coincidence between beauty and healthfulness is
no less striking. From the Greek chiton and the
Spanish mantilla to the graceful Persian divided
skirt and mantle which the celebrated Worth kept
hanging upon the walls of his studio as his ideal of
the beautiful in feminine costume the lines of artis-
158 THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO DARWIN.
tic beauty and of hygienic utility coincide almost
absolutely.
The corset, the long skirt with its street-cleaning
attachment, the crippling multiplicity of petticoats,
and the ridiculous bustle are offenses alike against the
canons of art and the rules of health.
So far we have been for the most part combating
popular impressions, but we now come to a sense in
which beauty is even proverbially strong, and that is
in its influence. It has been a most potent factor in
our development, and is yet in our daily life even in
these Philistine days.
In all ages its power for good and for evil has
formed one of the principal themes of song and story.
It was no mere accidental coincidence that made
the " fatal beauty " of Helen the mainspring of the
movement of the grandest epic poem of the ages ; nor
simply a figure of speech which described the beauty
of Paris as causing discord upon Olympus itself.
From Venus and Here to Madame de Pompadour
and Ninon de 1 Enclos, from Cleopatra to Mary Queen
of Scots, the power of beauty has swayed not only
minds of men, but the destinies of nations.
The sweet face of the Madonna has been one of
the most potent and purest influences in the sway of
Christianity, and the saintly features of Beatrice in
spired the majestic vision of Dante.
And strange as it may seem in anything so fleeting,
so proverbially evanescent, there is a genuine phys
ical basis for all this metaphor and poetry, and the
sway of beauty is most powerful not in camp and
THE STRENGTH OF BEAUTY. 159
court, but in the field, in the cottage, in the home.
From the lowest to the highest forms of animal life,
nay, through the larger part of the plant-world as
well, we find it exercising its sway.
Naturalists had long been puzzled to account for
the wonderful beauty and wealth of color and elabo
rateness of markings displayed by all sorts of living
forms from the pansy to the peacock.
It was popularly assumed, with a self-conceit that
was amusing in its proportions and na ivetS, that they
were placed there for our especial benefit and sole
enjoyment, and their presence was actually made one
of the principal props of the old " argument from
design.
Even Darwin in his earlier investigations was at
a loss to account for their presence, but later, their
true meaning dawned upon him, and he declared
them to be instead of merely provisions for our own
selfish enjoyment, means of progress second only in
power to natural selection. Without them, nearly
one-half of the vantage gained by vigor, agility, or
intelligence would be lost, and in many cases the
organism would soon become extinct. In plants, for
instance, the vivid tints and gorgeous markings of
their petals are signals to attract the insects whose
visit is often absolutely necessary to their fertiliza
tion. The silvery scales, the ruby fins, and the superb
lusters in all colors of the rainbow, in fishes, are for
the purpose of charming and attracting the opposite
sex.
The velvety plumage, the wonderful shadings and
160 THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO DARWIN.
markings and the matchless song of birds alike the
wonder, the joy, and the despair of the artist, the
poet, the musician are simply aids to courtship, as is
proved by their presence for the most part only in the
mating-season, and exercise a profound influence upon
the development of the species.
The royal coat of the leopard, the majestic antlers
of the monarch of the glen, the splendid stripes of the
zebra, the tossing mane of the war-horse that " clothes
his neck with thunder," not merely delight the e}^e,
but form a prominent part of that wonderful engine
of progress, sexual selection.
In our own species nature s masterpiece in colors,
in outlines, and expression the human face divine,
owes its very existence to the power of this instinct
in us for beauty. Her next most wonderful feat
the ivory whiteness and satin-like suppleness of the
human skin can be traced solely to this same cause,
as can also the rippling splendor of that " glory of
woman," her hair. No possible explanation can be
given for the substitution of any one of these for our
original short, warm, hairy coating on grounds of
utility, they are a pure outgrowth of our love of the
beautiful.
" Beauty only skin-deep " indeed ! it has entered
into the very blood, bone, and marrow of the race for
countless generations. With its advent hand-in-hand
with love, the stern law of the " survival of the
fittest " loses half its terrors, for a new element is
introduced into the problem of " fitness," a new world
is opened up for selection. It has swayed and soft-
THE STRENGTH OF BEAUTY. 161
ened not only the hearts of men, but the great ele
mental forces and relentless laws of nature herself.
And has it lost any of its primeval power to-day ?
Not a whit. It sweeps everything before it as almost
no other influence can. Even in this mercenary age
the value of beauty as a dower is second to none.
That a lovely woman should have the talent and
wealth of half a province at her feet is as natural
and excites no more surprise than that the discovery
of gold should be followed by a wild rush of eager-
eyed prospectors. It is exchangeable for a large
equivalent in cash in any mart, and that is apotheosis
in the nineteenth century, the sincerest tribute it can
pay it. To its possession the renowned and omni
present " woman in the case " owes all her power.
It still gives to-day to the individual possessing it,
as it has always done in past ages and species, a
greater power of control over his or her influence
upon the generation to follow, than any other single
attribute with which they could be endowed.
As to the value and safety of beauty as a guide and
incentive, there will be found wide difference of
opinion. The Puritan, and his name is legion, when
this question is under discussion, denounces it as ab
solutely untrustworthy and misleading, one of the
cunning snares of the Evil One ; the philosopher and
the man of the world alike, while admitting its desir
ability, regard it as too feeble and evanescent a thing
to be permitted to seriously influence conduct. And
upon this point all would agree that any desire or
effort to attain personal beauty would not only be
162 THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO DARWIN.
unprofitable but positively unbecoming. And yet it
is just as legitimate and far more wholesome to desire
to be beautiful as it is to desire to be rich, or intel
lectual, or famous. Indeed, we have no hesitation in
declaring that whatever may be the " chief duty of
man," the " chief duty of woman " is to be beautiful.
Not only in mind and character, but also in face and
form, in voice and in dress. And I am glad to say
woman lias always proved faithful to her mission.
By her unswerving devotion to her God-given in
stinct, in the face of indifference, nay, of ridicule and
denunciation, she has builded better than she knew,
and I am convinced that not a little of the superior
purity of woman s moral nature is due to her devo
tion to beauty. Woman s love of beauty has done
well-nigh as much for the world as man s love of
liberty. Both have led to excesses, but these have
been mainly due to false ideas of their true nature,
and in the overwhelming mass of their influence they
take rank among the purest and most ennobling im
pulses that stir the human bosom. To be beautiful
is just as legitimate and elevating an ambition as to
be brave, to be strong, to be pure, and its attainment
will usually include all four.
The good, the true, the beautiful, are not synony
mous terms, but a sincere and intelligent pursuit of
either will almost invariably be found to include both
the others in its scope. The love of beauty is as holy
as any other religious impulse. Contrast it for a
moment with the love of riches, which, legitimate
enough in moderation, is so easily changed into that
THE STIIUNGTH OF BEAUTY. 1G3
ruthless greed of gain, that selfish disregard for the
rights of others, and that degrading tendency to
measure all human hope and achievements by their
net pecuniary results, which is the curse of the
present century. Compare it for a moment with
those other qualities which are usually rated so far
above it in proverbial philosophy: with prudence,
with economy, with thrift, and that whole brood of
so-called small virtues which so easily hatch into
vices and make the niggard, the coward, the miser.
Nay, even place it by the side of that overwhelming
ambition for culture, which is now sweeping like a
prairie fire through the popular mind, darkening the
heavens with its smoke clouds, deafening the ear
with its roar, and threatening the male of the species
with ignominious destruction, or at best a mere
toleration of his existence. But which too often
leaves behind it ashes, in the form of a thin layer
of dislocated and undigested information and an
irritating smoke-haze of polite omniscience and
superficial cleverness.
Beauty is not only far better and safer as a goal
than any of these but it belongs in an entirely differ
ent class. Our instinct for it is no mere selfish per
sonal greed, but one of the great trinity of religious
aspirations. Although ranking lower in importance
than the instinct for the Good and the instinct for the
True, it is nevertheless equally holy and equally
essential to the perfect development of character.
Even alone it will lead to some wonderfully perfect
results.
164 THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO DARWIN.
The master impulse in the Greek nature was the
worship of the beautiful. Beauty, and physical
beauty at that, was the summum bonum of the entire
race, and yet in its pursuit they developed not only
a sculpture and an, architecture which has been the
despair of the world ever since, but a physique
which for vigor and athleticism has scarcely yet
been equaled, a philosophy marvelous both in its
depth and its brilliancy, a literature which will live
as long as the world endures, and a system of politi
cal thought which is still the model of our highest
institutions.
As an incentive this third grace has one decided
advantage over the other two, which is that it is in
stantly recognized and appreciated by all. The good
may often appear hard and stern, the true is to many
cold and even cruel, but upon the face of beauty rests
ever, as it were, the smile of divine approval which
kindles an instant response in every heart. Show
man beauty as a part of the goal of his upward strug
gle and you arouse his enthusiasm at once. No need
to urge him to love beauty, he couldn t help it if he
tried.
Beauty is no mere accident of nature, no mere
surface-play of the elements, it is a part of the very
constitution of the universe. If anything be imma
nent, be divine, it is. Wherever we turn its smiling
face welcomes us. Whether it be in the rosy mist
that ushers in the pearly dawn, the golden cataract of
the noon-day sunshine, or the flaming hosts of sunset
in their crimson and purple and velvet. In the soft
THE STRENGTH OF BEAUTY. 165
and rippling tide of green which floods the landscape
every spring, the luxuriant shade and dancing, waving
abundance of meadows and corn-field in the golden
glow of summer or the crimson and purple flames of
the autumn woodlands and vineyards, filling the air
with the haze of their soft, blue smoke. It smiles at
us from the rosy tints, the sparkling eyes and the
dimpled curves of infancy, it glows in the eye, it man
tles in the cheek, it is revealed in the splendid bear
ing of that crown and glory of the universe, woman,
it glistens in the silvery locks, the delicate grace and
gentle dignity of ripe old age.
166 THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO DARWIN,
CHAPTER IX.
THE BENEFITS OF OVER-POPULATION.
I am well aware that to many this title will appear
paradoxical, if not absurd, that I shall seem to stand
much in the position of the author of the historic
chapter on " Snakes in Iceland," which he was com
pelled to open with the words " There are no snakes
in Iceland."
Not only this, but I am uncomfortably aware that
I am flying in the very teeth of the great bulk of ortho
dox, be-spectacled, political economists, both ancient
and modern, in disparaging the ferocity of their
favorite bugbear, over-population, which is always
just about to devour us, but somehow never does. I
shall not venture to entirety " denige of " his ex
istence, but will limit myself to the assertion that
the ruthless pressure exercised by the units of the
race upon each other and upon the means of subsist
ence, whenever considerable masses of them are con
fined to any comparatively limited space, has been
not only not detrimental, but positively beneficial in
its effects and will probably always continue to be so
up to the highest densities of population.
The Malthusian view makes man his own deadliest
enemy and the Black Hole of Calcutta the ultimate
THE BENEFITS OF OVER-POPULATION. 167
goal of the race unless something promptly be done
to take matters out of poor old nature s incompetent
hands.
To what extent does a backward glance over the
history of the race appear to support this view, that
the mutual struggle for existence of man against man
is in any way deleterious or likely to become so ?
According to this view the nations which have had
plenty of " elbow room " should have made the
earliest start and the most substantial progress in
civilization. But where do we actually find the
earliest recognizable dawn of progress beginning ?
Not on the broad and fertile plains of Southern
Siberia or Western Turkestan, the reputed cradle of
our race, not in the rich champaign of Hungary nor
yet the rolling prairies of our own Mississippi valley,
or the boundless pampas of South America, but in a
little, narrow, ribbon-shaped river-vallc}^, the only
streak of light in what is even to this day, the Dark
Continent, hopelessly hemmed in on either hand by
stern mountain range and pitiless desert.
A little band of nomads, having lost their way, and
wandering instinctively but aimlessly westward, have
crossed the desert and suddenly from the crest of the
mountain barrier catch sight of the silvery waters of
the Nile. They rush in and take possession, and in
a few dozen generations they and their cattle have
multiplied until the valley is brimful of herds and
pasturage suddenly becomes scarce. The soil is
needed to feed men instead of cattle, and agriculture
springs up, rude and careless at first, but rapidly be-
168 THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO DARWIN.
coming more finished and complete as the food-de
mand upon each acre increases, while out of disputes
as to values and boundaries, civil law, mathematics and
systems of mensuration slowly evolve, men begin to
cluster together for mutual benefit and protection and
" citification " or, as we now call it, civilization, begins.
Still the great tide of human life rises steadily,
rolls back from the desert-mountain barrier on either
hand and surges down the narrow channel, until the
whole valley from the Delta to the cataracts is throb
bing with confined energy. The tension rises a little
higher and the floods bursts its banks, to roll in tide
after tide of conquest over the major part of the then
known world, until its force is completely exhausted.
When wars abroad and luxury and disease at home
had thinned the ranks and broken the constitution
of her people, Egypt fell, but not until she had in
delibly stamped herself upon the history of the race
and established a claim upon its gratitude which needs
but to be mentioned to be admitted.
The Nile valley under the Pharaohs held over
seven millions of people, who were so terribly " over
crowded " that they lived in splendor and conquered,
where two and a half millions of their descendants
to-day grovel in poverty and slavery.
Turning to the next beacon-light of history we find
it flaring above a small group of rocky islets in the
northeastern corner of the Mediterranean. Places
with just enough fertile soil in patches to start the
race to multiplying and then force them back upon one
another or into the sea. Again the pressure steadily
THE BENEFITS OF OVER-POPULATION. 169
rises and civilization and philosophy with it, until
an overflow occurs, after which the race steadily de
teriorates. So long as " Greek met Greek " in insular
warfare and lived and fought and died crowded
within his little city walls, of which he was proud to
consider himself a " brick," Greek heroism, thought
and vigor grew with ever-increasing intensity, whet
ted like iron against iron, but from the moment that
the flower of Hellenic chivalry, spurred on by the
lust of conquest, began to spread itself over the whole
of Asia and send back its oriental spoils and vices to
corrupt the cowards and sluggards who remained at
home, the doom of Greece was sealed.
The star of empire moves but a short distance west
ward when it again comes to a stand over a narrow
mountainous peninsula with a frowning barrier of
well-nigh impassable Alps across its landward base,
swarming with people who in beak and appetite bore
a not wholly fanciful resemblance to the eagles on
their standards. A nation of hardy peasants and
sturdy burghers, driven in upon one another by
natural barriers and hostile neighbors, they developed
under the pressure a bravery, endurance and sagacity
which made them the masters of the known world
and the lawmakers of all time.
So long as Rome could breed men enough to fill
the ranks of her brave legions, all went well, but the
demand at length became too heavy for the supply,
her best and bravest were steadily drafted into the
provinces and their places at home filled up by slaves
and weaklings, wealth and luxury added their deadly
170 THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO DARWIN.
influence, and the grand old sturdy race was literally
extinct long before the Gothic invasion reached the
walls of the imperial city. With a population of a
million and a half crowded within her narrow walls,
Rome ruled the world; with two hundred thousand
in the same space, she groveled under the cowardly
heel of Austria scarce twenty-five years ago.
Thus far it would hardly seem as if even very high
degrees of mutual pressure upon each other and upon
the means of subsistence were in any way detrimental
to a race ; in fact, I should make bold to assert that
such a pressure was one of the chief moving factors
of progress and well-nigh the key-note of civilization.
But we live in the present, and the question now is,
" Does the condition of affairs about us to-day practi
cally bear out this view ? "
If we were to arrange the states and nations of the
different continents to-day in the order of the density
of their population, we should find that we had ar
ranged them, roughly speaking, very nearly in the
order of the influence and degree of civilization, or at
least that the groups at the extremes of the scale would
be practically identical in both cases.
For instance, in Europe we have at the head of the
list, Holland and Belgium witli a density of 424, and
Great Britain with one of 300 to the square mile, and
at the foot Turkey with a density of 70 and Russia
with 43. In Asia it ranges from China, with 530 to
the square mile, to Siberia with 2 and Turkestan with
less than 1.
In America, from the United States with 17 to the
THE BENEFITS OF OVER-POPULATION. 171
"section," to the Argentine Republic with 3. This
is the state of the case between nations of the same
form of civilization ; while of course one of the most
obvious differences between barbarous and civilized
nations lies in the density of their populations.
" Why, certainly," I hear some one exclaim, " sav
age races are thinly scattered because they re savages,
without tools or skill, while civilized peoples are
thickly settled because their ancestors happened to
stumble on to improved methods of cultivation and
labor-saving devices, and thus in creased the food value
of the soil."
But is this a logical statement of the case ? I think
it would be more nearly correct to say that savage
toilers are savage because they are thinly dispersed,
and civilized nations civilized because of their den
sity.
Take, for instance, the corner-stone of the last cen
tury s boasted industrial and scientific progress, the
invention of the steam-engine. Countless generations
of savages had sat and watched the white wreaths
rise from seething pot and bubbling kettle without
once even dreaming of making them their slaves.
For why ? They had no use for them. The u noble
savage " has little or no property that he cannot throw
over his shoulder or slip into his pouch and march off
with. What cares he for transportation facilities?
The beasts and herbs of the forest, with a few rude-
tipped arrows, supply his every need ; he wants no
labor-saving machinery, he feels no need of rapid tran
sit so long as his enemies are no fleeter of foot than he
172 THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO DARWIN.
is; in short, the demand for the invention must precede
the invention itself. And that demand comes only
from the pressure of keen and even savage competition
with Ids fellow-men. It is highly probable that even
the invention of the horse as a means of locomotion
was due to the stern necessity laid upon some short-
legged or short-winded savage of getting out of the
dangerous vicinity of some fleeter-footed and fiercer
neighbor as promptly as possible ; while it is almost
certain that the club, with its host of lineal descend
ants, the hoe, the hammer, the sword, etc., originally
owed its introduction to the desperate ingenuity of
some much-persecuted anthropoid as a means of
neutralizing the longer arms and sharper teeth of his
fellows.
But, it will be said, has not much of this boasted
civilization and progress in denser communities been
the gain of the favored few at the expense of the
many ; have they not been powerful by virtue of
their numbers and at the sacrifice of the health and
welfare of a large proportion of their constituent
members ? I answer, most emphatically, No ! that the
individual has gained in equal ratio with the com
munity. The average Englishman of to-day is
healthier, stronger, longer-lived, and in every way hap
pier and better off than the noblest savage to be found
anywhere on the globe, and so far from the individual
being at less value and importance as numbers increase,
by a curious paradox the value of human life is inva
riably lowest where it is scarcest. Infanticide is a
virtue and murder a fine art among savage tribes of a
THE BENEFITS OF OVER-POPULATION. 173
fe\v hundred souls, while the mere thought of either
sends a thrill of horror through nations of as many mil
lions. So far as statistics can be obtained, the death
rate among savages is higher than in any civilized com
munity, and of late years in many rural districts
than in the great cities. In other words, the struggle
with one s fellow-men is far less destructive and much
more rapidly improving in its effects than the struggle
with the elements of nature.
The government and leadership of the world to-day
in every field of thought and activity is, as it always
has been, a government by and leadership of cities.
Strike out those great seething, reeking masses of
struggling humanity, which we ever and anon hear
denounced as the plague-spots of our body politic,
as cancers upon our national life, and history would
have to be re-written from the beginning. Fancy,
if you can, a Greece without Athens, a Roman Empire
without Rome, France without Paris, an England
without London.
The vice, poverty, and misery of our great cities
strike us forcibly only because we see the crime and
incompetency of a province focussed and concentrated
into a few dozen streets and squares, while the mild
ness of the struggle for existence permits the per
sistence of forms which would long ago have been
eliminated anywhere else.
So much for the past and present, but it is for the
future, says some one, that we are most anxiously
concerned. It may be quite true that in the past,
with the aid of wars, famine, and pestilences on the
174 THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO DARWIN.
one hand, and the resources of science, growth of
prudence, emigration, etc., on the other, population
has never yet gone beyond certain comparatively
harmless limits of density, but can we be at all sure
that such will always be the case, with arbitration
threatening to take the place of war, famines abolished,
pestilence under control, sanitary science and benevo
lence preserving even the weak and almost worthless
forms and the bulk of the untilled garden-spots of
the earth occupied ?
Let us see how this problem was regarded by our
ancestors a century ago. .It is scarcely a hundred
years since a little volume entitled " Essays on Popu-
ation," by one Malthus, appeared in England, the
burden of which was that increase of population was
the chief cause of misery and crime, and must, there
fore, be checked by every lawful means in our power.
Its views were almost universally accepted by the econ
omists of the day. In spite of this fact this social
" root of all evil " continued to flourish, and to-day
stands ready to answer the charge. Since the time of
Malthus the population of England, declared already
far too dense, has nearly quadrupled, with what dis
astrous effects will be seen when we come to examine
the economic statistics of the latter half of that-
period, from 1830 to 1880. During this half century
the population has doubled, and by all the canons of
Malthusianism, misery should have done the same,
but for some inexplicable reason other things have
got ahead of it ; wages, for instance, have increased
on an average 70 per cent., while the hours of toil
THE BENEFITS OF OVER-POPULATION. 175
per diem have diminished 20 per cent. ; every penny
of the increased wage will buy a larger quantity of
bread, cheese, bacon, groceries, or clothing, for prices
are from 20 to 60 per cent, lower. Even " death and
taxes " have been robbed of some of their terrors, for
the rate of the former has shrunk from 28 to 18 per
1,000, and the latter almost in the same proportion.
" Misery" would seem to be another name for wealth
and comfort, for capital has increased four times as
fast as population, and is well distributed, for the
amount deposited in savings banks has increased 500
per cent., and the number of depositors 1,000 per cent.,
while the consumption of tea, coffee, sugar, cheese
and bacon per capita has increased 400 per cent.
Turning to the moral aspect of affairs, we find that
the proportion of pauperism has diminished 50 per
cent., of penal sentences 75 per cent., and prisoners
of all sorts 55 per cent. In short the quadrupling of
a population already so dense that the highest dictum
of the day was that " increase " meant " crime and
misery," has been attended not only by no deteriora
tion but by an elevation and improvement which
would have seemed simply incredible to contemporary
thought.
Have we any more reason to dread the future than
Mai thus had?
Let us take a brief review of our situation and
resources, always bearing in mind that there may be,
very probably are, influences as yet hidden in the
bosom of the future, as beneficent to and as unsus
pected by us as steam and electricity were by him.
176 THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO DARWIN.
Iii the first place, although we are utterly unable
to fix any limit of density beyond which population
cannot safely increase, yet taking that density which
to-day coincides with the highest type of national and
individual development, viz., about 800 to the square
mile, as at least a safe standard, we find that by far
the largest part of even that fraction of the world s
surface which we regard as civilized, scarcely averages
one-third of that density, this vast country of ours,
for instance, having less than one fifteenth of its pos
sible population.
In the second place, while very large areas of the
available soil have been colonized within the past cen
tury and the westward-bound Caucasian is already at
sword s points with the eastward-drifting Mongolian,
yet the colonies have scarcely been more than sur
veyed with a view to settlement, and we still have
nearly 3,000,000 square miles of virgin soil in Brazil,
the same in Australia, 2,000,000 in Siberia, half a
million in the Argentine Republic, and hundreds of
other smaller tracts, every mile of which may yet be
made to carry its 300 Anglo-Saxons or Teutons, while
as an almost bottomless cesspool for the absorption of
our surplus population the " Dark Continent " lies
invitingly open.
Farther than this, I think no one can gaze upon
the magnificent relics and remains of any of the
ancient civilizations without asking himself the ques
tion why its desert plains and valleys may not again
swarm with myriads of human beings who shall play
a noble part in history, instead of being only haunted
THE BENEFITS OF OVER-POPULATION. 177
by jackals, bats, Bediiween and Fellaheen. Darwin
in his "Descent of Man" at the close expresses
his conviction that from a biologic point of view it
seems inevitable that the civilized, progressive races
of the world to-day will steadily but surely conquer,
exterminate, and replace the savage, decadent ones.
That day will surely come sooner or later, and the
signs of the times are even now beginning to point
dimly towards it. Egypt is already practically an
English province ; Russia and Britain are steadily
preparing to divide Persia and Turkestan between
them. Turkey, with Syria, and possibly Arabia, is
slowly declining into the jaws of the " dogs of Chris
tians," while France and Italy are quietly strength
ening their grip upon the whole north coast of Africa.
The partition of Africa and even of China is the
most exciting " game of nations " to-day.
The present degraded inhabitants of these lands
will become hewers of wood and drawers of water for
the superior race until such time as soap, spirituous
liquors, and the influences of advanced civilization
generally shall have either elevated or exterminated
them. In fact it is highly probable that all savage,
barbarous, or degenerate tribes inhabiting the tem
perature-belt where our Aryan race can thrive will
ultimately go the way of the red men of the prairies.
But what avails all this, even with the possibility
of balloons, flying-machines, the utilization of the
ocean tides as huge generators of electricity, the
absorption of nitrogen as food from the air without
the intervention of plant-life and other faintly-
178 THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO DARWIN.
heralded future achievements of science ? What can
this do more than temporarily postpone that " dies
irse " when the aeronaut from Venus will find him
self confronted by the legend " Standing-room only
on this Globe," backed by a howling mob of cannibals,
since, as everybody knows, " Population tends to in
crease in geometrical, and the means of subsistence in
arithmetical, ratio? "
It is really most interesting to note how widely
this great axiom has been recognized ; it seems to
have fairly compelled acceptance by its own inherent
force and beauty, it has such a conclusive, satisfy
ing sound about it and supplies such an apt ex
planation of eveiy conceivable economic situation,
however puzzling, in fact its only drawback is that
it isn t true. Neither logic nor experience will har
monize with it.
In the first place, inasmuch as the means of sub
sistence in question consist wholly of certain families
of our distant relatives, the edible seeds, plants, and
fruits and the animals which feed upon them, every
one of which has a natural rate of increase from ten
to a thousand times as great as our own, there ought
to be but little fear of our being able to make the
supply of them keep pace with our demand.
In the second place, all the records at our disposal
show that in any given case the means of subsistence
have not only not fallen short of but gone far ahead
of the increase of population, for instance, while the
population of the United States increased 20 per cent.
in a given period, the produce increased 50 per cent.,
THE BENEFITS OF OVEK-POPULATEON. 179
and the wealth of England has multiplied eight times
while her population lias only doubled in the last
half century. As an eloquent friend of mine has
epigrammatically expressed it, " Every single mouth
born into this world brings with it two hands."
In fact man is not only the highest of mammals
but the most valuable and useful to his own species,
none the less so that he cannot actually be used for
food. The intrinsic value to the race of the noble
horse is far greater than that of the cow or sheep, and
although no check is ever placed on his increase by
slaughter, we have no fear of being " overpopulated "
by him or of his becoming a drug on the market, and
why should we of his infinitely nobler, more perfect,
and more useful brother, man. The whole history of
the development of the race has been and is simply
the working up of the dust of the earth into the
highly-specialized form which we term " man." And
the supply of dust is still practically unlimited.
Had the alchemists of the middle ages, who wasted
lives and fortunes in tireless search after the " Philos
opher s Stone," but looked a little deeper, they would
have found it within themselves, the beautiful blood-
red ruby, the flower of life, turning everything it
touches not into dull, yellow lumps of metal but into
that most beautiful and most precious of all treasures,
the living, glowing " human form divine."
180 THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO DARWIN.
CHAPTER X.
THE DUTY AND GLORY OF REPRODUCTION AND THE
ECONOMICS OF PROSTITUTION.
REPRODUCTION is Heaven s first law. The first
commandment in Genesis is, " Be fruitful, and mul
tiply," and is of more importance than all the other
Ten put together.
It has also the advantage of being much more gen
erally observed, and that without much assistance
from either Church or State : indeed, in spite of them
both at times.
The usual attitude of systems of morality and relig
ion towards this magnificent sexual impulse is char
acteristic. The principal burden of their childish
song is, " Thou shalt not ! " They have generally
little to say in approval, but much in reprobation of
a process whose dignity, beauty, and magnificent per
fection they seem utterly incapable of appreciating.
Religion, of course, lias frequently gone to the op
posite extreme, and instead of denouncing the sexual
impulse as wholly sinful and degrading, at best a
concession to poor, weak, erring human nature, which
may be tolerated because it cannot be actually sup
pressed, has actually deified it as in the unspeakable
Phallic rites of antiquity from which one of our now
REPRODUCTION. 181
most sacred modern religious symbols is more than
suspected of being derived.
However, between the Pauline attitude and its
offspring, the Black Plague of monasticism, on the
one hand, and the Phallic worship with its Bacchan
alian rites upon the other, there is really little to
choose either as to rationality or as to actual moral
results.
Because, forsooth, this impulse is a hard thing to
control, it is to be condemned entirely, and scarcely
a religion or a philosophy can be found which has
not advised, nay, even ordered its absolute repression,
and held up celibacy as the ideal state. Here, as
elsewhere, morality is far too exclusively engaged in
shrieking " Don t ! ! "
Fortunately, however, its counsels, commands, and
threats have about as much effect upon the mighty
sweep of this holy impulse as Dame Partington s
broom had upon the tide of the Atlantic. And be
cause it dares to defy their petty authority and dis
regard their edicts, priest and philosopher alike pro
claim it an outlaw and a war at extermination is set
on foot. This soon collapses, and they decide to
tolerate it. As a last stab, they unite in stigmatizing
it as a low, " animal " appetite, and that alone was
enough to damn it for centuries. But the latter term
carries no condemnation with it nowadays. On the
contrary, the fact of an instinct being shared by the
lower animals is good presumptive proof that it is of
great benefit and value.
We have reason to thank God that the sexual in-
182 THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO DARWIN.
btinct, one of the noblest, holiest, and most elevating
that stirs our bosoms, is an " animal " one, and conse
quently far older and stronger than we are. It is
backed by the life of all the ages and throbs with all
the pulses of nature.
Its worst, and I had almost said its only, perver
sions are human and the results of " reason " and
convention,
But this is not the only ban under which this
wonderful faculty of ours is laid. Not only is its ex
ercise to be barely tolerated as a concession to weak,
sinful human nature, but its very existence is to be
ignored as completely as possible, and an imitation
instinct known as " modesty " has been invented and
developed for that special purpose. Its principal
function is to deny the existence of the very senti
ment which called it into being. That it is a virtue
of the first water, all sorts and conditions of men
unite in testifying, but it has one peculiarity so sin
gular as to provoke mention. It begins just where
innocence ceases. The first thing that our first
parents did in Eden after they had fallen was to dis
cover that they were naked and make unto themselves
aprons of fig leaves. Between these two influences
our grand sexual functions have gradually come to
be regarded as positively disgraceful in themselves,
and the parts concerned in them as something to be
absolutely ashamed of. Even in scientific nomen
clature they are styled the " pudenda," things " to be
ashamed of." As for the sexual appetite, the most
important and overmastering impulse which moves
REPKODUCTION. 183
the race, instead of its excesses alone being reprobated,
it has been so indiscriminately condemned that its
mere presence is regarded as sinful. Is this a
natural, healthy, rational attitude ? No, nor a moral
one either. This feeling alone produces the very
excesses it was intended to check.
And what is the real rank and dignity of this
despised and berated function ? The most important,
the highest, the holiest. Listen to that brilliant
champion of evangelicism, Drummond in his fascinat
ing attempt to convince the Apaches of science that
they are or ought to be orthodox Christians if they
only knew their own province a little more accurately,
and could take a broader view of its relations (in
which he comes perilously near succeeding in a way
he little intended). In the light of the Gospel
according to Darwin he declares that " Sympathy,
affection, fidelity, sacrifice, indeed all those noble
traits included under the term altruism, spring from
the reproductive instinct." Instead of being subver
sive of all morality it is the very foundation-stone of
it. With its feeblest and blindest flutterings altruism,
the regard for others, is born.
Unselfishness, sacrifice, is no recent development
due to " revelation," but goes back to the Ameba
itself. From fission to parturition, reproduction is
self-sacrifice. And from the results of the process,
from the care and nurture of " these little ones,"
have grown every atom of our morality, from earth-
buried foundation-stone to heaven-soaring pinnacle.
In the light of the fifth Gospel we are just begin-
184 THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO DARWIN.
ning to see the eternal truth of the saying of the first
Gospel, " Suffer little children to come unto me for
of such (aye and from such) is the Kingdom of
Heaven." True manhood, true womanhood, in the
highest sense, is impossible without reproduction ;
while as for love, sympathy, philanthropy, sense of
duty, it has simply created them. " The stone Avhich
the builders rejected is indeed become the head of
the corner." Even the much-lamented power of the
sexual instinct is simply proof of the overwhelming
importance and value of the function to the race, and
the man or woman who can suppress it entirely is less
than human rather than more, and will surely become
inhuman sooner or later. The first duty of man is to
perpetuate the species. The race has the first mort
gage on him, and has had ever since he was a sea
weed.
If marriage is a failure it is because the race is,
and the " Caucasian " is " played out." Our whole
social, ecclesiastic, and political organization centers
round this institution as nucleus. Civilization rises
from the family, through the clan, the tribe, the state
to the nation. " Charity," in the true sense of love
of one s neighbor, literally " begins at home," and
gradually broadens to include the tribe, the nation,
the human race in its scope. Indeed the family, the
home, need but to be mentioned to be accorded the
rank of the great and only true civilizing, humanizing,
spiritualizing influences, and any nation which begins
to weary of their control is marked for destruction.
Neglect of, or escape from, their obligations is
REPRODUCTION. 185
ruinous to all concerned. We all lament the sad lack
of home-training so obvious in the children of to-day,
but we forget that the lack of training suffered by
the American parents of to-day on account of the
scarcity of children is equally hurtful. This is the
age of untrained parents, and they need training as
much as children. The training of children works
both ways, like mercy " it blesses him who gives as
he who takes," and no man s or woman s education is
more than half finished without it. Infancy, as Em
erson has said, is indeed " a perpetual Messiahship."
And yet we constantly hear this magnificent sexual
instinct of ours shrieked at and berated as if fornica
tion, adultery, prostitution, and rape, were its chief
and commonest results. Truly, " The evil that men
do lives after them, the good is oft interred with
their bones." The instinct, like all other natural
ones, is at least a hundred times as powerful for good
as for evil.
Let us consider now for a moment the attitude of
etiquette and morals too often interchangeable terms
towards the sexual function in the light of the im
portance of the latter. There is only one word to
describe it, it is simply idiotic.
In the first place they attempt and assume to ab
solutely taboo the whole subject after the fashion of
that other bird of equally brilliant plumage and gifted
intellect, the ostrich. Not only the sexual organs
themselves, but even the whole of the body which is
covered by the clothing under which they are hidden
is forbidden to be mentioned or even referred to in
186 THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO DARWIN.
"polite" society. According to its canons the
entire body from the neck to the tips of the toes is a
sexual organ. The origin of this lascivious refine
ment is obvious, for the mention of the regions which
happen to be merely geographically adjacent to the
forbidden parts and which no pure-minded or well-
bred person would dream of associating with them,
such as the chest, the abdomen, the legs, is as severely
censured as that of the parts themselves. To such
an insane pitch is this " nasty-niceness," as Aunt
Tabitha calls it, carried, that we have probably all
heard reference to the " limb " of a piano, or the
" limbs " of a pair of dividers.
While there is some doubt as to the true nature of
much which passes for personal modesty, there is
none whatever in regard to this society variety. It
is a reticence born originally of a diseased imagination
or a guilty conscience, discreditable to the individual
displaying it and disgraceful to the society which
exacts it. Instead of being, as it mincingly affects
to be, the very pink of refinement, it is the essence of
vulgarity. " Honi soit qui mal y pense," as the chiv
alrous King Edward said when he picked up the
garter dropped by one of the ladies of his court.
When we come to the absolute ignorance of their
most important function which this taboo entails
upon many of our boys and girls, the case becomes a
most serious one. How many of our boys have the
true meaning, uses, and dignity of the sexual organs
delicately, but plainly, explained to them before the
age of puberty by their fathers ? or how many of our
REPRODUCTION. 187
girls by their mothers ? I fear scarcely ten per cent.
The first knowledge most of them have of this won
derful subject is from the filthy lips of some vulgar
servant or prurient older schoolmate. Is it any
wonder that, driven by natural curiosity and the pow
erful impulses of awakening sexual consciousness,
and ashamed to inquire of those who ought to be
their natural instructors, they resort, in an ignorance
as pitiable as it is deplorable, to experiments upon
themselves, upon one another, nay even upon the
lower animals. Truly, ignorance is the very mother
of vice.
But the most fatal result of this extraordinary at
titude of both morals and etiquette is the extent to
which the sacred obligation of exercising the repro
ductive function is destroyed. Our young men and
young women of the " better classes " calmly debate
the question as " to marry or not to marry." To be
capable of such hesitation is a sign, not of self-control,
but of degeneracy. After the alliance has been duly
arranged for and formed, then the question is to be
discussed whether it shall be permitted to result in
anything ; and if so, after how long delay and how
many or, more correctly, how few of them. And from
these two sources spring the head-waters of the reeking
stream of Prostitution. Its current is swelled mainly
by the men whose incomes or positions are not regarded
as " suitable " to marry on, and those who having mar
ried " can t afford " to have children or " don t want
to be bothered " with them. The man or woman
who, for any such reason, absolutely refuses to assist
188 THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO DARWIN.
in continuing the species has committed the un
pardonable sin, and is henceforth fit for nothing but
conversion into fertilizer. And nature will attend to
the conversion with unerring certainty and compara
tive promptness if not interfered with. Marriage
under these circumstances is little better than legal
ized concubinage. Indeed, the arrival at this decis
ion is but Nature s forester s mark upon the trunk
which is beginning to rot at its core and all her axe
men well understand and obey its significance. It is
her seal to the death warrant of the race and also of
the individual.
Even that modified form of interference with her
orders which consists in markedly limiting the num
ber of children, is almost sure to result in serious
injury to both individuals concerned and to the com
munity as well. In the first place it is a fruitful
cause of prostitution. Many a man is practically
driven to the brothel by his own wife and many
another deliberately resorts to it from a cowardly and
criminally selfish desire to shirk the responsibilities
of manhood. Such a man ought to be branded like
any other eunuch. In the second place it is easily
the chief cause of abortionism, one of the most pre.
valent and deadly sins of the present day, whose evil
results, both physical and moral, are rapidly coming
to rival those of prostitution itself. Thirdly, it rears
the children who are permitted to appear, in an
oligarchy or aristocracy instead of a democracy, and
thus deprives them of one of the most valuable parts
of their education in hardiness, self-reliance, and
REPRODUCTION. 189
self-control. Children who are less than three in a
family are nearly always " spoiled."
In short, limiting the size of families has ever been
and still is the chief and most potent factor in the
decay of nations and the fall of civilization.
It is literally a " sin against the Holy Ghost," for
it is the thwarting and denying of our deepest and
holiest instinct by filthy, huckster-like, Mammon
worship, a veritable making of our " Father s house,
a house of merchandise." And like such sin " it
shall not be forgiven." Every nation in which it had
notably prevailed has either stagnated or decayed.
The grand old eagle-eyed, bull-chested Roman breed
was literally extinct from its ravages centuries
before the Empire fell. The stinking stagnation of
China and India is largely due to it in the form of
infanticide.
And to-day we can study the process in the yet
living subject, in our sister republic, renowned alike
for the small size of her families, the brilliancy and
healthfulness of her prostitutes, the commercializa
tion of her women, both those in marriage and those
in the streets, the strict economy and thriftiness of her
lower classes, even in respect to manhood and femi
nine honor, the filthy pessimism of her literature, and
the excess of her death-rate over her birth-rate.
The latest and most extraordinary development
from the theory of the sinfulness of sex, is that which
is, in these latter days, brayed into our ears from
every "suffragist" platform. That child-bearing, in
stead of a factor in woman s development, is absolutely
190 THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO DARWIN.
a hindrance to her higher education, a clog upon her
freedom and a mortal enemy of " culture." In fact,
as a " club-woman " tersely expressed it to a friend of
mine a few months, ago " Only fools bear children."
There is only one thing which need be said in regard
to this delusion and that is, that it has its uses. It
prevents the continuation of the breed. Neither the
" emancipated " woman at one end of the scale nor
the prostitute at the other, propagate their kind, and
society has reason to be thankful in both cases.
Where then is the excuse for this attitude of hostil
ity toward the sexual impulses ? Their excesses only.
Only one of these is now to be considered, but it is
generally regarded as the most serious. It certainly
is prevalent enough. It has existed from the begin
nings of history, nay of society itself ; it appears in
every race above savagery, in every clime, under
every religion and form of government. It has the
universality of an institution of nature. It has formed
for itself a distinct class or caste in every society ; it
has its tutelar divinity in every temple, its patron
saint in every hagiology. It can even boast of an
odor of sanctity. It has formed part of the ritual of
most religions, and has been more or less directly rec
ognized, if not endorsed by all. And yet it is dis
tinctly a product not of nature, but of civilization.
It is not " animal " but essentially human, like most
of our vices.
No trace of it is to be found in any animal com
munity, and very little among savages. It is one
of the "flowers of civilization" and, at bottom com-
REPRODUCTION. 191
mercial, " bourgeois" Instead of a sin of instinct, it
is a sin against instinct, directly on the part of the
female, indirectly on the part of the male.
To a woman it is a trade pure and simple, while the
man has about as much right to urge his " appetite "
as an excuse, as would one who turns from healthful
food to glut himself upon garbage. That the exer
cise of the sexual function is necessary to the health
of the male at any age is a pure delusion, while before
full maturity it is highly injurious.
Prostitution is a crime against nature. The atti
tude of the anthropologist, the naturalist, towards it
may be summed up in one sentence : " It needs must
be that offenses come, but woe unto that man through
whom they come." And yet it must perform some
useful function, for it everywhere exists.
Another singular feature about it is its absolutely
irrepressibleness and unmanageableness. Ecclesias
tical, civil, and military authority have all in turn
utterly proscribed it and repressed it with ferocious
vigor, and at times all three have been united in one
determined effort to root it out, as in the Papal
dominions for nearly two centuries ; but the utmost
they could accomplish was to change its form and in
crease its extent. They simply learned, what we in
Iowa have just been learning again in the costly
school of experience, that " prohibition does not pro
hibit."
Nor does the attempt at " regulation " fare much
better. From a careful study of all the authorities I
could secure and observation of the actual condition
192 THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO DARWIN.
of affairs in several of the European cities I am driven
to the conclusion that the results of regulation are
about as follows :
1. A small diminution in the number of registered
prostitutes and a large increase in that of clandestine
prostitutes ; the decline of the brothel and the enor
mous multiplication of the grisette.
2. A marked increase in the number of men in
dulging in the vice, on account of diminution of fear
of infection, and what is even more potent, removal
of all risk of interference by the police, of arrest in
some " raid," and the consequent possibility of pub
licity in the police-court.
In short it puts the stamp of safety and respect
ability upon the whole business for both sexes.
3. It diminishes the marriage-rate of the commu
nity by rendering concubinage in some form, safe,
popular, and economical.
4. It increases the ratio of illegitimate births, by
obvious causes. Paris, the Mecca of this system, has
the highest illegitimacy-rate in the world, 26 in the
100 births or one-fourth of all. Finally, it does not
even diminish venereal disease, first, because the
most fruitful breeding-ground of syphilis and gon
orrhea is not among prostitutes but among " clandes-
tines," so-called "sempstresses," waiter-girls, cham
bermaids, etc., and " amateurs " of all descriptions,
and secondly, because the most rigid and skilful in
spection can find no trace of disease in a woman, who
may develop well-marked primary or secondary symp
toms before nightfall and infect a dozen men before
REPRODUCTION. 193
morning. In short, from the theological, the legal,
and the philanthropic standpoint the case appears not
only ruinous but well-nigh hopeless.
When, however, we turn and approach it from a
medico-economic point of view its aspect alters com
pletely and I venture to claim it as one of the grand
selective and eliminative agencies of nature and of
highest value to the community.
It may be roughly characterized as a safety valve
for the institution of marriage. This, of course, does
not imply "approval" or endowment of the process,
for though the escape of a certain amount of steam
is beneficial to the engine, it is " a very cold day "
for the steam that escapes.
It is simply a huge sewer, a garbage dump, a
crematory, into which are hurled the least desirable
elements of both sexes, degenerate men, and degraded
women, for conversion into more useful and less
odorous materials.
I think it would be hard to find a subject upon
which there is a more " plentiful lack " of reliable
information and data of real scientific value.
This is unavoidably inherent in the nature of the
case for obvious reasons. After a brief but bootless
search through the authorities, I decided to appeal
directly to the only class of men who possess both
the information and the training to qualify them to
speak with authority. I accordingly sent out a num
ber of letters, containing a list of questions, to the
leading physicians of New York, Philadelphia, Bos
ton, New Orleans, St. Louis, Chicago, San Antonio,
194 THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO DARWIN.
and San Francisco, also to a number of practitioners
in smaller towns, thus including every section of the
Union. Although the number of replies is small,
yet there is such a substantial harmony through them
all that they form at least a most suggestive " straw "
to indicate the direction of the current of professional
opinion on this question. And this straw assumes
the dignity of an indicator when we further add,
that these few were those who felt themselves com
petent to speak definitely out of over one hundred
who replied to my letters and that the list included
such names as Gihon, Parvin, Edson, Price, Hare,
Bolton, Bangs, Bernays, Dudley, and Chassaignac.
The first point to be considered in an economic
study of this question is the motive which induces
women to enter this profession. By this term I
mean, of course, the dominant motive, it is freely
recognized that no one cause alone impels any woman
to this pursuit.
The following is the average obtained from all
answers upon this point :
Love of display, luxury, and idleness. . 42.1 per cent.
Bad family surroundings 23.8 "
Seduction in which they were inno
cent victims 11.3 "
Lack of employment 9.4 "
Heredity 7.8 "
Primary sexual appetite 5.6 "
100.0
This makes a showing strikingly similar to that of
the criminal class among men, who are recruited
REPRODUCTION. 195
mainly from the idle and shiftless among all classes,
and from the defective classes. These two causes,
including heredity, accounting for nearly seventy-five
per cent, in the above table. It may be regarded as
emphatically a trade, chosen from love of idleness,
of luxury, and absence of sense of honor, or decency.
Even Du Chatelet, after asserting that over sixty
per cent, are driven into it by seduction, desertion,
and want, admits in a lucid interval " C est le desir
de se procurer jouissanses sans travailler qui est
dans le premier rang de causes." Again " C est la,
vanite* et le desir de briller." Bitter as is the scorn
and contumely heaped upon the prostitute she de
serves it all, for she has in the vast majority of cases
deliberately sold her birthright not for pottage, but
for champagne and tinsel.
In reply to the question what is the chief and what
is the second cause of prostitution, the results are,
from twenty answers :
i. n.
Love of display, etc 10 10
Bad family surroundings 4 10
Heredity 3
Seduction 2
Lack of employment 1
Here the results are singularly uniform and
strongly emphasize, the conclusions from the former
table.
The next question relates to the class of society
from which the mass of our prostitutes come, and I
know of no point upon which popular impressions
are more widely generally erroneous. The prevalent
196 THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO DARWIN.
view appears to be what might be described as the
" W. C. T. U." one, that its priestesses are all the
victims of man s lust and base deceit and drawn alike
from the mansion and the hovel. Like most of the
conceptions with which this body has blessed the
world it lacks the support of facts.
Out of twenty-one answers to this question eighteen
reply "lower," "lowest," and "poor and detective,"
" factory girls," or some equivalent term. One re
plies " lower middle " and two " middle."
Now as to the grade of education of these recruits,
seventeen reply " very low," " uneducated," " anal-
phabets," etc., and four reply " fair " or " average."
This corresponds with the results of Du Chatelet,
who found that the prostitutes of Paris practically
all came from the laboring or artisan class, and es
pecially from those Avhose lack of intelligence and
persistence makes them mere day laborers, " roust
abouts," as the modern term is. By an elaborate
examination of their certificates, he also found that
out of 4,470 prostitutes 2,332 could not sign their
names (fifty-five per cent.), and 1,781 could sign
"but badly," leaving only 110, or barely two and five-
tenths per cent, who could write at all legibly.
In short, as a professional man of extensive oppor
tunities for observation, once remarked to me, " I
have seen and studied thousands of these women all
over the Union, and have never been able to detect
any difference between them, which was not the work
of the milliner and the upholsterer." As another of
my friends expressed it even more tersely, "Out of
REPRODUCTION. 197
thousands, I have never seen one with good table-
manners."
There are of course exceptions to the rule, but the
prostitute possessed of a spark of refinement, educa
tion, or intelligence, is extremely rare, and usually
very soon either marries or becomes owner of an
establishment, and in either case retires from active
practice.
And just here I would like to say one word in cor
rection of what I believe to be another popular error
as to the personality of a prostitute, and that is that
she is usually beautiful. The advocates of the seduc
tion-theory even go so far as to declare that she must
be, otherwise no one would be tempted to seduce her,
which is a fair sample of their logic. From a some
what extensive experience with women of this class
in the general hospitals of London, Paris, and Vienna,
and a S3^stematic study of the physiognomies of thou
sands of them upon the streets of the above cities, and
of New York, Philadelphia, and Chicago, I have no
hesitation in declaring that a handsome or even
attractive-looking prostitute is rare, and that the
average of beauty is lower among them than in any
other class of women. The only important exception
to this statement is the unchaste class among actresses
and artist s models ; who are no real exception, as
they are almost forced into vice from the extreme
exposure and pressure of their occupation. What
ever other evils the " fatal power of beauty " may be
responsible for, it has no more to do with prostitution
than " the flowers that bloom in the spring." Men
198 THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO DARWIN.
do not go upon the street or to the brothel to gratify
their artistic sense for beauty any more than to seek
intellectual companionship, but to get " the pound of
flesh" that their lust demands, and the most "popu
lar " prostitute is the one who is best capable of fill
ing this demand to the utmost.
Even the majority of the most fashionable mem
bers of the demi-monde, the mistresses of the
wealthiest and most aristocratic " men-about-town,"
are creatures whom an anthropologist would trust
about as far as he would a rattlesnake, and whom an
artist would shudder to look upon. Here again is a
point of resemblance to the criminal classes of whom
the warden at Millbank Penitentiary declares that
" a handsome face is a thing rarely seen in a prison,
and a pleasing, well-formed face, never."
As everywhere else, so even here, beauty is a sign
of purity and wholesomeness, a safe guide in nine
cases out of ten.
The next question is, what class furnishes the
largest proportion of its own members to the ranks of
vice ? In other words, what occupations seem to
most favor this downward tendency ? The unanimity
upon this point is practically complete. Of twenty-
two answers sixteen say "factory girls," "shop
girls," "saleswomen," "waitresses," etc., and four
say " domestic servants," and two " those too idle
to have any occupation." In short, it is the women
who are engaged in public occupations who are most
in danger.
Again, we have the commercialization of women
KEP110DUCTION. 199
as a powerful factor in the production of this vice.
It is based upon a trade instinct, pure and simple.
Space does not permit me to enter upon the subject
here, but I wish to record my solemn and sorrowful
conviction that the woman who works, outside of the
home or the school, pays a heavy penalty, either
physical, mental, or moral, and often all three. She
commits a biologic crime against herself and against
the community, and woman-labor ought to be for
bidden for the same reason that child-labor is. Any
nation that works its women is damned and belongs
at heart to the Huron-Iroquois confederacy.
Now as to the much-mooted question of the life-
expectation of the prostitute after she is fairly em
barked.
The " Talmage " view has been loudly trumpeted
abroad, and as for once, it is partially correct, there
is little needs to be said. The average of twenty-
two observers gives the life duration at nine years,
nearly double the popular one, but short enough.
The same method gives the death-rate as seventy-
five per cent, greater than that of normal women
of the same station, but the causes of this in
crease are markedly different from those usually
not only popularly, but also professionally imputed.
Every observer gives alcohol the first place as a factor,
venereal disease comes second; morphin, cocain,
chloral, etc., third; suicide fourth, irregular hours
and life, fifth. Alcohol would thus appear to be
doing as useful work among women as it is among
men. It is one of our greatest " missionary " agen-
200 THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO DARWIN.
cies, and unlike all others its " conversions " are
usually permanent.
Last of all comes the question of the effect of this
institution upon the propagation of the species.
Do women of this stamp leave descendants ? Very
seldom.
The deduction from all the answers is that barely
three per cent, of prostitutes bear children at all
during the ten years of their career. The birth-rate
of healthy married women during such a term at this
age would be nearly 200 per cent. Like all other
evils, prostitution is self-limiting. The reason for
this sterility is obvious. Disease of the sexual or
gans, syphilis, " preventives " of every description,
abortions, and infanticide, easily account for it. Of
the children born alive, very few survive, from igno
rance, disease, or neglect.
As to the proportion who marry, the answers vary
widely, the average being 13.2 per cent., but upon
the next point there is substantial agreement ; viz.,
that those who do are practically sterile, the answers
as to fertility ranging from " barren," " very sterile,"
" very low," to " unfavorable," " about 1.6 per cent."
The proportion who permanently reform is vari
ously estimated at from " one in a million " to 30
per cent., but the average is low; viz., 6.8 per cent.
This is probably not far from correct, for even the
managers of Bethels and reformatories for this class
sorrowfully admit that the number who come under
their care are but a very small proportion of the
entire class, and even of these only a moiety are
REPRODUCTION. 201
permanently improved. The Secretary of a large
Society of this sort (Mr. Talbot) estimates that in
the eighty years previous to 1845 only 14,000 or
15,000 women had been within the walls of all these
institutions in London, or less than 200 per year.
To sum up then from the female side of this insti
tution, our conclusion would be that it is concerned
principally with the most worthless varieties of
women, the degenerates or criminals, and the idle,
the mercenary, and shameless of the working classes,
women in short, whom the community can well
afford to spare.
That these women, when fairly in its grasp, are,
practically, absolutely prevented from propagating
their kind during their career, and rapidly destroyed
if they remain in it. That very few marry, and those
who do so are barren in a high degree ; in short, it is
an eliminative agency of high value and wonderful
efficiency for first sterilizing and then rapidly destroy
ing the worst specimens of the sex women whose
" reform " and child-bearing would be a curse to the
community.
What now is the effect of this vice upon the men
who indulge in it, and through them upon the com
munity? Practically the same, namely, the steriliza
tion of the unfit. The more one studies the ven
ereal diseases, the more one becomes impressed with
the conviction that their deadly virus is aimed, not at
the life of their victim, but at his or her power of
reproduction. In fact, both gonorrhea and syphilis
are very seldom fatal in women and only exception-
202 THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO DARWIN.
ally so in men, popular and even professional im
pression to the contrary notwithstanding. But they
are most effective sterilizers for a period varying
from six weeks to six or seven years, and not un-
frequently totally destroy the reproductive power.
This is strikingly true of syphilis. Suppose a man
becomes infected at a brothel. If married, any
conception in the great majority of cases will ter
minate in a miscarriage, a still-birth, or the produc
tion of a child which dies of syphilis within six
months oi its birth. And this history repeats itself
until the taint gradually dies out of the blood, a
period of at least two years, under the promptest
and most skilful treatment, but which, under neg
lect or with a later infection of the wife, may ex
tend to five, six, or seven years. This may seem an
overdrawn picture, but Tarnier declares that 85
per cent, of syphilitic children die before the sixth
month. Kassowitz gives the percentage of children
born of syphilitic parents, either still-born or dying
within six months, at 55 per cent., and Sturgis
reports that 71 per cent, of the children ol such
parentage, born in the Moscow Hospital die within
that period. By and by the virulence of the poison
dies down, a child is born that barely escapes with
its life, another by a little wider margin, and so on
till healthy children can be produced. But what of
these who escape ! Stunted, blear-eyed, pitiable,
with sunken noses, opalescent cornea, scarred mouths,
and notched teeth, they are degeneration incarnate.
I have seen hundreds of these poor creatures in our
REPRODUCTION. 203
large hospitals, the oldest children of their families,
literally victims of "the plague of the first-born,"
the first of three, five, even seven, or eight fetuses
and children to survive the attack of the virus, and
I have yet to see the one who had passed thirty years
of age.
Tarnowsky reports a suggestive group of three
couples infected by syphilis who produced twenty-
two children ; of all these there came only one
healthy adult man. Syphilis is more merciful than
the Jehovah of the Decalogue, for it usually sup
presses the second generation before it acquires con
sciousness, and permits no third generation to ap
pear to be " visited with the iniquities of the
fathers." Like all other diseases it is self-limiting in
the individual or the species.
But what of the other far milder and commoner
venereal disease. Until recently considered a mere
trifle, medical opinion has undergone a positive revo
lution in regard to it. Though apparently cured in
a few weeks, its infection may linger for years and
slowly but surely destroy the reproductive glands in
both sexes. Many of our most serious ovarian dis
eases are now traced to it, and it is known to be one
of the most frequent causes of sterility.
More than one of the leaders of medical thought
goes so far as to send the despairing message : "It is
doubtful whether gonorrhea is ever cured !
Here again, " justice may move with a leaden foot,
but she strikes with an iron hand."
To sum up, the whole mechanism of prostitution is
204 THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO DARWIN.
an engine of deadliest efficacy in sterilizing and ul
timately destroying the worst elements of both sexes.
To say that it also involves fearful and widespread
suffering and damage to innocent women and chil
dren, would be as true as it is pitiable and harrowing,
but I firmly believe that this is much less both in ex
tent and painfulness than is usually stated, and is
from a purely economic standpoint only, far over
balanced by the benefit resulting to the race. " A
companion of fools shall be destroyed " is no venge
ful threat, but a simple statement of a stern, necessary
natural law. Pain, disease, and death are hard to
bear and harder to look upon, but they are among
the greatest benefactors of the race.
The only way to check its action is to reduce to its
"anatomically necessary" limits, the class upon
which it is sure to act. Men should be taught the
sacred duty and true dignity of reproduction; that
any attempt to avoid this duty brings its own punish
ment. That their sexual powers belong not to them
selves, but to the race, and every exercise of them
must result ultimately in either a pregnancy or
syphilis. That they cannot hope to enjoy the privi
leges of manhood and shirk its responsibilities.
Women should be taught to trust their instincts,
for in them the maternal impulse is stronger than
life itself. That like every other natural instinct it
is of highest benefit, not only to the race but also to
the individual. That any attempt to thwart it, or
even failure to give it proper development, will result
in either dwarfing or decay.
REPRODUCTION. 205
The freedom of intelligent, refined conversation
upon sexual subjects ought to be broadened, it should
no longer be considered indecent to speak plainly.
Most of the flavor of obscenity which hangs about
the discussion of sexual matters is due to this very
restriction. No excuse or danger should be left for
boys and girls on the ground of ignorance of this
important function. In other words, intelligence,
altruism, true refinement, should be promoted by
every possible means and Nature will continue to
assist us by emphatically discouraging their opposites.
Above and beyond all we should foster, glorify,
deify if necessary, the one instinct in man s bosom
which can master the sexual, the highest, the holiest,
the strongest of which he is capable, his love for
the one woman who is, or is to be, all the world to
him. Once touch this spring and he is safe. Well
may all of clearest, and deepest vision among us, the
poets, never weary of singing its praises. The age
of chivalry should be brought back in nobler, truer
form.
Lust laughs at opposition and exults in danger, but
sinks ashamed at the whisper of love. Impress upon
every man not his own danger, but that of his wife
that is to be, of his children yet unborn. Nay,
further, make him to see that the last insult he can
offer to the one for whom he would cheerfully lay
down his life, is to make in, the burning words of the
apostle, " her members the members of a harlot " and
prostitution will disappear from the face of the earth.
206 THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO DARWIN.
CHAPTER XL
THE VALUE OF PAIN.
PAIN is one of the essential conditions of progress.
Not merely in the sense of being part of the fric
tion which necessarily accompanies all movement,
but as a vital precedent of all possibility of move
ment. Ask any biologist what is the first and most
important property of living matter, and he will tell
you that it is " irritability," the power of responding
to stimuli or impressions. Touch with a needle point
the most beautiful and brilliant crystal and you get
absolutely no response ; turn to the grayest and flab
biest bit of ditch-water animal-jelly that you can find
and he moves himself away from the steel at once.
He can feel, therefore he lives. And if he feels at
all he must be able to feel pain as well as pleasure.
Nay it is even more important that he should perceive
the disagreeable stimulus than the agreeable, for the
former needs to be moved away from, while the latter
does not. Leave him capable of only pleasurable
sensations and he will be destroyed inside of an hour.
In this earliest form the powers of sensation and of
responding to impressions are combined in the same
cell, but as the organism becomes more complex,
more extensive and powerful movements are called
THE VALUE OP PAIN. 207
for, and special cells are set aside for contractile pur
poses alone, leaving to the surface cells the duty of
sensation only. Later it becomes not merely a ques
tion of escape but also of retaliation, and a central
office to combine the muscle-strands in orderly mili
tary movements is needed and the ganglion-brain is
called into being. In the mean time the surface cells
have been dividing up the work of feeling among
themselves ; some have educated themselves to catch
the finest variations in the light-rays, some confine
their entire study to the sound-waves, others to the
changes of temperature, while the vast majority of
them simply refine upon their original powers of
contact-perception or touch. Thus out of the simple
possibility of discomfort arise the five senses, their
muscle standing-army and their joint judicio-execu-
tive brain. Pain is the mother of the mind, and
muscle is its father.
Nor can this powerful factor in the creation of the
body-organism be permitted to " rest upon the seventh
day," like the Jahveh of Genesis, when its work is
apparently completed. The possibility of the con
tinuance of life absolutely depends upon its incessant
activity. Cut the nerve which connects any part or
organ with the conscious brain and you place it in
serious peril at once. Precisely as if you blindfolded
a man and then turned him loose in an enemy s
country, or as if you cut the wire which connected
an outlying military post with headquarters. You
may cut the motor nerve which conveys orders from
the brain, or, what is equivalent, destroy the " motor
208 THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO DARWIN.
center " of the part in the brain with comparative
impunity, as far as the nutrition of the limb is con
cerned ; it loses the power of motion, but even the
muscles retain their bulk for a long time in spite of
lack of exercise and the general health of the mem
ber remains perfect.
But it is far otherwise when sensation is destroyed.
The benumbed hand or foot goes stumbling along like
a blind man, cutting itself here, burning itself there,
rasping its surface against a hundred objects, and
from every merest scratch an ulcer forms. So long as
all its cells are in health and vigor and can live on the
standard rations of the rest of the body, issued to them
through the blood-vessels, all goes well, but the
moment any of them fall below par from injury or
otherwise, and cannot notify the central commissariat
of the fact, they fall into the plight of a baby trying
to live on government rations of hard-tack and salt-
beef. That heat and swelling about a wound which
we term " inflammation " is merely a forced and
special feeding-up of the neighboring cells to enable
them to breed rapidly and fill the gap, and while in
excess it is a source of danger in itself, in its absence
there can be no healing.
Observe it is not the loss of the power to pass the
signal "All s well" that is injurious, it is the in
ability to report discomfort. Not the absence of all
sensations, but the absence of painful ones that is
fatal.
For instance, in paralysis of the aged, one of the
chief dangers to life is from the formation of ulcers
THE VALUE OF PAIN. 209
about the back and hips due solely to pressure
against the mattress, and hence known as " bed
sores." The peculiar danger of these is first that,
sensation being abolished, they will form without the
patient s knowledge, and in neglected cases will
often attain the size of the palm of the hand and a
depth of an inch or more before they are discovered,
and second, that communication with the brain being
cut off, little or no inflammation occurs and they are
extremely difficult to heal. It is no uncommon thing
to see them six inches in diameter and an inch deep,
and yet with scarcely enough inflammatory reaction
around them to redden the skin at their edges. This
absence of pain and consequent inflammation jioe
only impairs healing-power, but also deprives the
general system of one of its chief barriers against the
absorption of the products of decay, and a fatal blood-
poisoning is extremely apt to occur.
A peculiar illustration of the uses of pain is
afforded by that dread disease leprosy. Here one of
the earliest symptoms is the loss of sensation in a
hand and arm or foot, while the muscular power is
unaffected. Many a victim has first discovered his
condition by severely burning or cutting himself
without feeling pain. In one dramatically tragic
case, a planter who supposed himself in perfect
health thoughtlessly caught a heated lamp-chimney
which was falling, and didn t know it was burning
him until the smell of his scorching fingers attracted
his attention ! What is the result ? In a very short
time tiny cracks, bruises, and scratches develop all
210 THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO DARWIN.
over the hand or limb affected, these rapidly grow into
ulcers and either heal very slowly or steadily deepen
until fingers, toes, nay even hands and feet are com
pletely amputated by them, or the limb is so drawn
and crippled by the great scars that it becomes
almost useless. There are, of course, active proc
esses of destruction at work as well in the disease,
but a great part of the terrible deformities of the
limbs produced by leprosy are due solely to this
negative destruction of sensation and its conse
quences. In modern hospitals it is found that by
keeping lepers in bed, in comfortable wards and pro
tecting their extremities against injury and irritation
in every possible way, their lives may be very greatly,
if not almost indefinitely, prolonged.
But there is also another way in which pain is of
marked benefit in case of disease or injury, and that
is by securing rest for the part affected. The agony
of an inflamed joint, for instance, is an imperative
order to the muscles controlling its movements to
keep it perfectly still and motionless. And the order
is usually strictly obeyed. So important does nature
consider it that, by a curious transference, the pain
of a diseased hip-joint, for instance, will be felt by
the sufferer in the knee and ankle, so as to keep the
whole limb at rest. This function of pain is beauti
fully illustrated in the lower animals. A broken leg
in a dog or a deer, for instance, will be so carefully
protected against the pain of movement, supported
against the other limb, rested against the side of the
body and swung along with such a gentle movement,
THE VALUE OF PAIN. 211
with its toe just trailing on the ground, that the
results are often equal to the best that we can boast
with all our splints and bandages. Truly, pain is
nature s splint.
A similar protective influence is exerted over the
inflamed lung by the acute distress of pleurisy.
" But," says some one, " what of those diseases in
which pain is the principal evil, in which no structural
changes can be found in any way proportionate to
the agony endured, what of neuralgia, of blinding
4 sick-headache/ of sciatica? Is not the pain the
disease in these cases?" By no means. It cannot
be too emphatically asserted that pain always means
something. It does not occur simply as an accident
of chance, still less for the purpose of developing
patience, or as a " means of grace," but as a pointed
reminder that something is going wrong. Neuralgia
is the cry of the nerves for more sunlight, "sick-
headache" a protest against eye-strain. In them
selves comparatively harmless, as danger-signals they
are simply invaluable. Hence the seeming paradox,
that those who suffer most, often live the longest;
the sensitiveness of their nerves absolutely compels
them to halt at the very threshold of danger.
Pain is literally the price of life. And this brings
us to the question : " What is pain ? " abstractly con
sidered. " What is the difference and what the rela
tion between it and pleasure ? " We are all perfectly
clear in our own minds on these questions, in the
concrete, from personal experience, but how shall we
define our conception ? On careful ultimate analysis
212 THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO DARWIN.
we are driven to the somewhat unexpected conclusion
that pain and pleasure are really both vibrations of
one and the same chord. That the very sensitiveness
which makes the one possible, necessarily makes the
other also possible. That the only way to prevent
painful impressions, from our environment, is to
destroy the mechanism which permits the reception
of pleasurable ones. In short, life without pain would
necessarily be life without pleasure. The old mythic
poets made a shrewd guess at this scientific truth
when they described the life of Olympus as " color
less," " joyless," and sang of the " twilight of the
gods." And Kipling s prophetic insight has caught
the same ray, in his magnificent parable, the greatest
poetic conception of the century, " The Children of
the Zodiac."
More than this, the two sensations are not merely
vibrations of the same chord, but varying degrees of
the same vibrations. The difference between them is
one not of kind but of degree. Almost any pleasura
ble sensation can be transformed into a painful one
by simply increasing its intensity, and many painful
ones into pleasurable merely by decreasing their
intensity or changing the circumstances.
The instantaneous coolness of a piece of ice placed
upon a parched tongue is delicious, but let contact
be prolonged only a few seconds and the very same
" coolness " becomes intense discomfort. The similar
"transformation" of the warmth of a Yule log is an
other illustration which of course suggests itself. A
flood of golden sunlight is the most pleasing sight
THE VALUE OF PAIN. 213
which falls upon our retina, but throw the rays direct
ly into the eye and a dazzling pain takes the place of
the former enjoyment. A gentle friction of the body-
surface is an agreeable sensation to nearly every one,
but increase the pressure or rapidity a little and it
produces a burning pain. The sensation of " sweet
ness "is so keenly enjoyable that it has become in
connection with " light " a critical synonym for the
highest good, and in childhood an abundance of
"sweeties" or "candy" is temporary Paradise; yet
how many adults are there in whom a very few spoon
fuls of simple sugar will not promptly convert this
delight into loathing, and how few to whom the
" oversweet " taste of glycerine, chloroform, or sac
charine is not positively repulsive ?
In short, pain is any sensation raised above a certain
intensity. And even the degree of this intensity varies
widely with the individual and the circumstances.
On the other hand, it is well-nigh impossible to
draw a line of demarcation between, for instance, the
pangs of hunger and the pleasant cravings of appetite,
between an intolerable itching and a pleasant tickling
sensation, between the joy of longing and the bit
terness of " hope deferred."
" But," asks some one, " even granting that pain
is necessary, is it not merely a necessary evil, and are
not its general effects purely disastrous?" Quite
the contrary, the effects of pain in improving and
developing both the individual and the social organ
ism have been just as powerfully beneficent as in
creating them.
214 THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO DARWIN.
It is, of course, obvious that pain or the dread of it
has been the chief factor in. the development of the
means of escape from it, and of the myriad mechan
isms in beast, in bird, and fish that subserve this end.
It is no mere coincidence that the most timid crea
tures are also the fleetest, the trout, the deer, the
hare, the swallow, for instance, while their fleetness
again is the only thing that enables them to afford
such rare beauty of form and coloring. The fin of
the fish, the wing of the bird, the legs of the deer,
owe their development in large measure to hunger
and fear.
There is also a pretty direct connection between
the sensitiveness of animals and the degree of their
intelligence. The indifference of the turtle to pain
is largely concerned with his limited cerebral capacity,
the thickness of the pig s hide is a good index of his
mental power, and the stupidity of the sloth is closely
connected with the dulness of all his perceptions.
But it is when we come to consider the potency of
pain in social development that its value stands out
most clearly. The earliest political unit is a group
formed for mutual protection against hunger, cold,
and wild beasts. Danger compels men to herd to
gether, and all the social virtues are fostered by it.
The rowels of nature s most powerful spur, hunger,
are continually reddening the flanks of the primitive
community. The Apostle s scathing arraignment of
the Cretans, " whose god is their belly," would liter
ally apply to every savage tribe and many a civil
ized one. Hunger is one of the mainsprings of prog-
THE VALUE OF PAIN. 215
ress. At its imperative command the flint was
chipped into the arrow-head, the dart, the spear. In
its honor the net was woven, the hoe was made, and
the soil broken. To appease its cravings the wild
bull is broken to the yoke, the forests are felled, the
ditch is dug through the marsh.
On its errands the ship is launched on the perilous
deep and the band sent out upon the war-path. Into
its service have been impressed the winds of heaven,
the steam-wreaths of the cauldron, and the glittering
shafts of the lightning. It is the real Aladdin s
lamp of civilization. The ceaseless westward flow of
the human stream and march of the " star of empire "
has been at the behest of its Genii. Whether it be
born of a barren soil and a cruel sky or of the pres
sure of over-population, it has played a leading part
in moulding the destinies of the nations.
In the fall of every world-empire from Assyria to
Rome the conquering race has invariably come from
a mountainous or barren land, or from a sterner sky.
And still to-day the nations of the bleakest belt of
the temperate zone, where the struggle with soil and
climate is severest, the Scotch, the English, the Dutch,
and the North-Germans are over-running the whole
of the inhabitable globe and bid fair to far outdo
Alexander by more peaceable and far more stable
means.
To what is the Scotchman more deeply indebted
for his world-renowned, " long-headedness," enter
prise, and frugality than to his stony soil, his barren
muirlands and his "dour" climate, to say nothing of
216 THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO DARWIN.
the kilted Highlander on one side of him and the
English gauger on the other ? Have the dogged per
severance, the quenchless love of liberty, and the
sturdy honesty of the Dutchman which have written
him such a brilliant record on the pages of modern
history no connection with his ceaseless struggle to
beat back the cruel tooth of gray old ocean from his
very hearthstone ? An old historian has quaintly
suggested one reason for the extraordinary exploring-
enterprise of those matchless old sea-falcons, our
Viking ancestors, in the statement that they were
" certaine of lighting upon no more cheerlesse place,
than that whence they sette forthe."
Indeed it is almost an axiom of anthropology that
the white race cannot flourish where the snow never
lies. Below a certain degree of latitude it invariably
degenerates. The stinging kiss of the Frost-king is
absolutely necessary to the perfect development of
the blood-red flower of Aryan civilization.
In fine, hunger, cold, and poverty are veritable
blessings in disguise, and even to-day prompt a large
proportion of our productive activities. There is the
soundest physical basis for the spiritual beatitude,
" Blessed are the poor."
Are the benefits of pain limited to the purely phys
ical, the commercial, and the military aspects of
man s development ? Far from it, for in the intel
lectual and moral realms its laurels are brighter yet.
I venture to claim it as the very father of science.
The earliest dawn of knowledge in the mind of our
primitive ancestors was a recognition of the health-
THE VALUE OP PAIN. 217
fulness or harmfulness of all objects as articles of
diet. A knowledge gained by bitter experience.
To this day a baby s first and chief criterion of every
thing .about him is his mouth. Into that rosy opening
is thrust impartially, just as far as it will go, every
thing that his chubby paws can clutch from the con
tents of the coal-bucket to the painted monkey on a
stick. And his earliest mental concept divides the
universe simply into two divisions, that which tastes
nice and that which does not.
Some of you may have seen a picture by the idealist
Watts which represents our first parents seated side
by side upon a sunny sea-beach. A number of empty
clam, oyster, whelk, and other gaudily colored sea-
shells are strewed about them, the evident remains
of a primitive " clam-bake " in which the couple have
just been indulging. There is a pained and regret
ful expression upon the countenance of the man, and
he presses his hand over his distended stomach in a
most expressive fashion, while his wife watches him
in surprise and uneasiness. Some of the shell-fish
have evidently been out of season or of a poisonous
variety. The title of the picture is brief but expres
sive : " The Birth of Experience." And after some
such fashion unquestionably did human experience
and human wisdom begin. And more progress was
due to the bitter episodes than the sweet, for the im
pression made by them was incomparably deeper.
The school of experience is proverbially a " hard "
one, and " sadder but wiser " has become a house
218 THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO DARWIN.
hold word. Literally " the fear of the Lord is the
beginning of wisdom."
Just as most of the implements of peaceful in
dustry were originally weapons of war, so many
of our most valuable scientific discoveries and in
ventions have their origin in the bitter stress
and makeshift of acute discomfort. For instance
our entire knowledge of the structure and work
ings in health of this wonderful body of ours had
its birth in the study of its condition in disease.
Pathology is the mother of both physiology and
anatomy. By a singular oversight several of our
organs are still described in our text-books to-day
not as they appear in health or during life, but as
they appear after death or in positively diseased con
ditions. For so many centuries our attention had
been called to them only when diseased or upon the
post-mortem table that we had unconsciously come
to regard these as their normal appearances. The first
and only thing that induced primitive man to con
cern himself with his interior arrangements was their
causing him discomfort whether apparently primary
as pain or fever, or secondary as hunger or frost-bite,
was promptly set down as due to the activities of
more or less numerous evil spirits. To cure these
evils it is necessary to appease the spirits ; sacrifices
are made, and a ritual is born. Thus the earliest gods
of the race are deified discomforts. And the Jehovah
of the Decalogue, the " angry god " of the Puritan still
bears sad but distinct traces of some such origin. A
distinct class quickly springs up whose sole function
THE VALUi: OF TAIN. 219
it is to propitiate or even at times repel these trouble
some influences. This caste, formed for the simple
but comprehensive purpose of relieving discomfort
or averting disaster, both individual and tribal, is
primarily medical in the broadest sense of the term.
Not only is personal healing required of it, but also
state medicine, sanitary science in the widest sense.
But as most of the disturbances he is confronted with
are attributed to spiritual agencies, his work rapidly
takes on a priestly character as well. The shaman,
conjurer, rain-doctor, or voodoo is neither priest nor
physician but the common ancestor of both, as his
Indian name of " medicine-man " indicates to this
day. And from this singular and ofttimes grotesque
individual spring not only two out of our three
" learned professions," but also, incredible as it may
seem, most of our scientists as well. Thus part of
the bitterness of the warfare between theologians
and scientists may be accounted for on the ground
that it is a family feud. To aid him in the indi
vidual part of his duties, the relief of aches, of
fevers, of dysenteries, our physician-priest presses
into his service the herbs, the roots, the berries of
the surrounding copses, or the mineral earths of the
cliffs, and from these crude beginnings botany and
chemistry with their descendants biology and geology
are born. To this clay a number of our common
plants still bear the names given them from their
supposed medicinal virtues : such as " boneset,"
" liverwort," " sorrel " (" sore heal ") " feverfew," etc.
For assistance in the tribal part of his functions, the
220 THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO DARWIN.
prevention of drought, the securing of plentiful
crops, and assuring against defeat in battle, he
naturally appeals to the only heavenly bodies visible
to him, and astronomy with its daughters, physics
and navigation is brought into being.
Many if not most of our best known stars and
planets still bear as scientific titles the names given
them when prayed to for aid, or used in the con
struction of horoscopes.
Even as the greedy quest of the philosopher s
stone led to many an invaluable chemical discovery,
far more " golden " to the race than the discovery of
its object would have been, or as the wild and eager
search after the fountain of youth developed con
tinent after continent of undreamed-of richness and
beauty, so the desperate shifts and vigorous efforts
to escape the sharp spear of pain have won for the
race a knowledge, a power, and a happiness beyond
their wildest dreams.
As to the uses and value of pain in the moral
realm, these have been so fully and constantly in
sisted upon by prophets of every creed that nothing
more than the merest allusion is needed here. In
deed its importance has, if anything, been exagger
ated, but even upon the soberest view of the subject
it must be rated very high.
For instance it is obvious that without pain or the
possibility of it there could be no true courage, no
patience, no self-denial or devotion, without hard
ship, no endurance or fortitude, without tribulation,
no faith.
THE VALUE OF PAIN.
221
It is not too much to say that without suffering
no true character or virtue could be developed any
more than muscle and vigor without hunger and
cold; that the choicest of the saints are and ever
have been "they that have come up out of great
tribulation."
Pain is by no means the only or even the chief in
fluence in molding the destiny of man, indeed as
our next contention will be, its antithesis, joy, is
equally necessary and even more potent, but it is the
keen and biting chisel under whose edge alone can
the figure of the perfect man be hewn out of the life
less marble.
222 THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO DARWIN.
CHAPTER XII.
JOY is the sunshine of the soul. And like all
other sunshine it is both a chief cause of growth
and a most powerful antiseptic, a staunch friend
of life and a deadly enemy of fungi, miasms, and
decay generally. And yet men have hidden them
selves from it in caves and dark places of the
earth as if it were a pestilence. Yes, and are
still hiding. By one of those curious errors of in
direction so common in human experience the mere
fact of pleasure being so inherently and strikingly
attractive has made men hesitate to openly avow it as
an aim or object. In the first place, it was altogether
too childish to say that you did a thing simply
because you liked to do it, or wanted something
merely because it would give you pleasure. It might
be perfectly true, but one must formally give some
more " grown-up " reason than that. In the second
place, the pursuit of joy carried to extremes becomes
hurtful, therefore with that charming logic which has
been so brayed into our ears in these " prohibition "
days, joy is not to be pursued at all, officially,
though fortunately the actual practice of the race has
been far different. Hence most creeds and systems
" LEBENSLUST." 223
of morality or other guides of conduct have felt
called upon to solemnly warn humanity against pleas
ure of all kinds, sometimes even against women as
the chief means thereof, apparently in the philosophic
hope that by vehemently insisting that the race shall
go ten miles against its instincts, it may possibly be
(actually) got to go the one mile which is really
desired. But this line of action, though well-ineatn
and perhaps fairly effective, has one serious defect.
It places so large a part of the joy-seeking activities
of mankind completely outside of the pale of its
sanction, that these come to be regarded as sinful in
themselves, to be indulged in only with an air of
sneaking apology and regarded as mere, at best evil
but necessary concessions to the " animal part" of
man s nature. Hence when a man "plunges into
pleasure " he usually leaves his reason and his sense
of moral discrimination behind him ; there is no such
thing as a righteous, moderate indulgence, it s all
wrong, and the only question is, how much can lie
stand without injuring his constitution or his busi
ness reputation. Consequently, nearly all of the
avowed pleasure-seeking which one sees is either idle
luxuriousness or harmful dissipation, and a certain
sort of stigma comes to attach to any one who ven
tures to advocate enjoyment as a legitimate aim of
human conduct. But even at the risk of being ac
cused of favoring and perchance practising all sorts
of improper things from selfish hedonism to "licen
tiousness," I must declare that the message of the
Fifth Gospel is unmistakable upon this point.
224 THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO DARWIN.
Joy is not only perfectly legitimate, but one of the
most wholesome and elevating aims which can be
found. As an incentive to vigorous, healthy de
velopment, both moral and physical, it takes its
place beside the other great motive impulses, Love,
Courage, and Hunger. We have already seen what
a valuable guide to conduct our natural instincts and
the pleasure that attends their gratification are. not
merely in the physical but also in the mental and
moral realms. So that in the race generally and the
child especially a very large part of our activities
will be found to have joy as a motive. As a spring
of human action the relation between it and pain or
discomfort is most singular and often puzzling.
Whether more actions are determined by the fear of
pain or by the hope of joy would be a question
worthy of the dialectic of the schoolmen. The
question clears somewhat when we remember that
pain and pleasure are simply opposite extremes of the
same scale of sense-vibrations. Moreover, both being
purely relative, the mere escape from or cessation of
pain becomes a pleasure by contrast, and the depriva
tion of pleasure a pain. So that we may be striving
to gain or retain pleasure and avoid pain in one and
the same action, and which most powerfully impels
us would be a question for the gods to decide.
The relation between the two would perhaps be
most nearly expressed figuratively by saying that
pain is the stern monitor who drives us into the path
of safety and well-being, while pleasure is the smil
ing guide who leads our steps along it. Gaunt
" LEBENSLUST." 225
Hunger may drive us to the board, but kindly ap
petite presides at it after it is spread. Pain may be
the primary cause of the first performance of most
of our vital functions, but their continuation and
harmonious repetition is chiefly determined by pleas
ure. And yet the pleasure, appetite, is merely a
mild and bearable degree of the pain, hunger,
which brings us to the conclusion that pleasure is the
great complement and normal successor of pain, and
that most actions determined originally by pain or the
fear of it, which do not become pleasurable by repeti
tion, are physically injurious and ethically immoral.
So that joy becomes Nature s stamp of approval.
Duty, if determined by rational and wholesome
ideals, ultimately becomes a pleasure, and healthful
courses of action, whether didactic or industrial,
originally involving much effort and even repulsion,
become in the end pleasurable when formed into
" good habits."
Most things which we like to do (all which we
like by instinct) are beneficial to us, to a greater or
less degree. From a biologic point of view could
we imagine the existence of a species whose prefer
ences and pleasurable instincts were on the side of
harm ? How long would such a species survive in
the struggle for existence? Of course, this motive
like any other must take its place in the parliament
of impulses and submit to the vote of the majority.
It has, however, full rights upon the floor, and the
burden of proof is in every instance in its favor.
The mere fact that we take pleasure in a thing or
226 THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO DARWIN.
action is good presumptive evidence of its value.
While pain, and a good deal of it, is absolutely
necessary to vital progress, yet far the larger, and
more frequent and constant part in this is played by
pleasure. The value of pain emphatically lies in its
avoidance and its developing effect upon the mechan
isms to that end, and while up to a certain point
beneficial, beyond that it becomes injurious and even
disastrous. Long continued submission to bodily
pain, from physical inability to escape or failure to
relieve, undermines strength, destroys appetite and
nutritive powers, deranges the nervous system, and
retards recovery in a most serious manner. And so
far from " purifying " and elevating the moral sense,
it is much more apt to blunt or distort it, to ruin the
temper, and destroy self-control. The " great suf
ferer " makes a most pathetic and instructive appear
ance, but like some other martyrs, in a majority of
instances, does not improve upon closer acquaint
ance. She is apt to become selfish and exacting,
and the chief credit, that she is usually entitled to, is
that she is no worse under the circumstances.
So that we have every reason not merely for recog
nizing pleasure as an aim, but for trusting it as a
guide, subject of course to revision by our other im
pulses and aims. Here, as everywhere, morality,
sanity, consist in balance. The great advantage of
this recognition is the powerful aid which it gives in
making goodness positive and aggressive, instead of
negative and defensive. Let it once be admitted that
joy is righteous in itself and legitimate as an aim, and a
227
long step lias been taken towards making righteous
ness joyful and duty a pleasure. The deplorable and
disastrous attitude upon this point taken, for the most
part, by Christianity in general and by Puritanism in
particular, needs no extended notice here. It is sadly
familiar to all of us both personally and historically,
and has been utterly condemned not merely by modern
science, but by the common sense and healthy in
stincts of humanity in all the ages. It is not merely
erroneous but profoundly immoral, and with the very
best of intentions "has cast a deeper gloom over, and
brought well-nigh as much suffering upon, the human
race, as any of the vices it was intended to check.
The gloomy pessimism of the gospels and epistles,
as to the believer s prospects and hopes in this world,
" They that will live godly in Christ Jesus shall
suffer persecution." "For if in this life only we
have hope, we are of all men most miserable," " In
this world ye shall have tribulation only," " Woe
unto you when all men speak well of you," u Mortify
the flesh with the affections and lusts," and scores of
similar jeremiads are bad enough, but they have
been " bettered " by the Church in all ages since.
The simplest statements have been distorted and even
omissions turned to account. We have been gravely
informed that Jesus never smiled though he is re
corded to have often wept, and " For every idle word
that men shall speak they shall give an account in
the day of judgment, 1 has been interpreted to forbid
jesting and light-hearted conversation of every de
scription.
228 THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO DARWIN.
There is no more saddening page of the history
of mankind than that which records the results
of stoning one of the greatest of the prophets of
the Mo.st High. From the denial of the holiness
of joy, have come the essential meritoriousness of
self-denial and suffering, the righteousness of gloom,
the piety of self-deprivation and torture, the sanctity
of dirt, the holiness of ignorance, and the whole
dance of delirium and carnival of unreason which has
at last died down, thank Heaven, to a few, feeble in
fantile prancings in strict evangelical circles, around
the pillory in which are exhibited those chief and
most potent snares of the Evil One, dancing, cards,
and the theater. The merest reference to the facts
is sufficient argument against the position, and in
deed modern orthodoxy has at last recognized the
error of it and modified its " interpretations " of Scrip
ture to meet rational views. Even from the inner
most circle of the evangelicals comes the message,
cheering both in its eminent good sense and frank,
Saxon bluntness, "Many Christians think them
selves pious when they re only bilious." (Bishop
Vincent.)
And yet in spite of this great object-lesson of the
utter failure of reprobation and denunciation, a
chorus of protests arises at once on every hand, the
moment it is even suggested to officially recognize
joy as an aim and pleasure as a guide in conduct.
And this in spite also of the further fact that botli
biology and medicine have abundantly proved that
three-fourths of the actions and things which give us
" LEBENSLUST." 229
pleasure tend to the advantage of both the individual
and the race. The great dread seems to be that an
era of license, of. self-indulgence will be thereby es
tablished at once. But a glance at this fear will show
it to be really unfounded.
In the first place this change brings joy, as it were,
from the outlaw of a despotism, to a citizen of a
republic. Instead of being less amenable to law and
reason than before, it is made more so. The mere
recognition implies the presence of an element of
reason and utility which can be estimated and its
legitimate weight and limits defined as accurately as
that of any other righteous motive. Instead of re
garding it as an impulse which will inevitably at times,
be yielded to without reason and in defiance of
authority, its indulgence is freely granted, so far as
it can defend itself on rational grounds. To use a
somewhat changed metaphor, the robber-baron has
become a member of parliament.
Secondly, any pursuit of joy carried to excess be
comes a failure, judged solely from an esthetic stand
point, promptly defeats its own aims in fact.
Take a mere gastronomic indulgence in the pleas
ures of sweetness, and beyond very moderate limits,
it promptly results primarily in blunting the tongue
and clogging the palate to the verge of disgust, and
secondarily in a colic or an attack of biliousness. The
penalties of excess are much greater than the pleas
ures of indulgence. An enjoyment of minutes is
matched by the discomfort of hours or even days, and
from a purely hedonistic standpoint the balance is
230 THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO DARWIN.
heavily upon the side of moderation. And in those
cases in which discomfort is not actually induced,
excessive indulgence soon blunts or even destroys
the capacity for pleasure. In fact moderation and
control are absolutely necessary to successful self-
indulgence.
These of course are mere truisms, but it is really
surprising into how highly moral a course of conduct,
the intelligent pursuit of pleasure alone, with an eye
to permanence and the many-sidedness of man s needs
in this regard, will lead us. Indeed several celebra
ted systems of morals have been based upon this im
pulse alone, under different names, from the epicu
reanism of early days to the " refined selfishness " of
Bentham, and the " utility " of Spencer. Morality
is not authoritative but essential, not artificial but
natural and self-existent, and a large measure of it
will be attained by the intelligent and effective con
duct of life from any natural standpoint whatever,
whether utilitarian or esthetic, instinctive or de
votional, spiritual or material.
We are so apt to judge every impulse or tendency
by its most striking results, in other words, by its ex
tremes. The instant that a " life of pleasure " is
mentioned, the image, that involuntarily springs up
in our minds, is that of the idler or the rake. And
yet either of these judged by even the briefest " life "
standard of pleasure alone, is a colossal failure.
Pure idleness, though a delightful relief after arduous
toil, whether bodily or mental, has the feeblest stay
ing powers of any pleasure that can be mentioned,
" LEBENSLUST." 231
indeed it is not a pleasure at a//, except by contrast.
And the contrast fades out with wonderful rapidity.
Enforced beyond a few hours or days, it becomes ab
solutely intolerable and the most excruciating tor
ture which the wit of man can devise.
The moment a man succeeds in reaching the
"leisure-class," he sets to work to get rid of his idle
ness almost as energetically as he did before to ob
tain the privilege of it. The nobler sort of the " up
per classes," the real " aristocracy," of every land,
whether hereditary or otherwise, take their duties
and opportunities seriously and work just as hard
and self-denyingly as any " laboring class " in the
community, simply to make their lives tolerable to
themselves. While the baser sort make just as much
of a business of pleasure-hunting as any banker does
of money-lending or farmer of stock-breeding, and
get not a ivhit more pleasure out of it. If they suc
ceed in their " business," they enjoy life, but so does
any man who succeeds in his occupation, no matter
what it is, and the percentage of " bankruptcies " is
high among them. Pleasure is like several other
things in the world, the surest way not to get it is
to aim directly and deliberately at it. As for the
rake and the hard drinker, instead of getting the
most pleasure out of life, no one with his equal op
portunities gets less. There is a wild delight in
sowing " wild oats " but a painful laboriousness about
the reaping of them. And they are a " sure crop "
and apt to " bring forth thirty- fold."
Considered as a pleasure-crop, they are a ghastly
232 THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO DARWIN.
failure. We have the unanimous testimony to this
effect not merely of the moralists, but of the rakes,
the libertines, and the wine-bibbers themselves. And
when these two classes of worthies agree, the point
may be considered established. In the case of wine-
drinking, for instance, leaving out of account its
value as food and medicine, and considering it simply
as a means of pleasure, the man who succeeds at it is
not the guzzler, but the very moderate drinker. To
say nothing of the " difference in the morning," the
heavy drinker so quickly blunts his palate and drowns
his finer senses, that bouquet, flavor, sparkle, play of
color, vintage, etc., are utterly lost upon him. The
poorest possible way to really enjoy wine or whiskey
is to drink hard. The man who gets the most pleas
ure out of drinking, not only infinitely in the course
of his life but even at the very moment of imbibing,
is the man who drinks his burgundy or port by the
glass and his whiskey by the ounce, and not the one
who gulps his champagne by the bottle and his
whiskey by the pint. No one gets less pleasure out
of alcoholic beverages than the drunkard except the
total abstainer. Therefore they naturally unite in
abusing wine and the moderate users thereof. Every
natural joy-instinct, when it has attained a reasonable
and legitimate gratification of itself, has fulfilled its
function and promptly disappears, leaving its place to
be filled by the attraction of the next need of the
organism. No man ever got drunk by instinct. He
has in the first place to " learn to like " the taste of
all but the weakest liquors, and even then, after
" LEBENSLUST." 233
drinking a moderate amount, he is much more un
pleasantly affected, in nine cases out of ten, by the
fullness in his head, the thickness in his tongue, and
the vagueness in his legs, than he is pleasantly affected,
by the taste of more whiskey. If men would always
stop drinking justas soon as they ceased to enjoy the
taste of their wine or whiskey, there would be much
less drunkenness than at present. Indeed, the habitual
drunkard can hardly be said to be urged on by real
pleasure-impulses at all. Certainly not by any nat
ural ones, but by a morbid craving first for excite
ment and then for delirious self-forgetfulness.
One of the most frequent objections urged against
pleasure as an aim is its extraordinary evanescence.
In the famous lines of Burns :
" Pleasures are like poppies spread,
You seize the flower, its bloom is shed,
Or like the snow-flake on the river,
A moment white, then melts forever."
But as a matter of fact this is one of its chief ad
vantages. It is so irresistibly attractive that if it
did not promptly fade upon realization, poor, weak
humanity would be in great danger of being inces
santly impelled in one direction to its ultimate un
doing. But every instinctive pleasure is capable of
"gratification " which extinguishes it completely, for
the present at least, and leaves the field clear for
attraction by the other needs of the organism. There
will nearly always be found to be much that is artifi
cial and unnatural in any craving which leads to exces
sive indulgence of any sort. Natural desires fade
234 THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO DARWIN.
like the rose, in the very act of fruition. " The full
soul loatheth the honeycomb," but unfortunately
not always the wine-cup. Man s natural pleasure-
impulses and desires, if followed as they present
themselves in their turn and each one permitted to
take precedence of the others, according as its need
is greatest, would lead him extraordinarily close to
the pathway of health, not only physically, as we
have seen in the chapter upon instinct, but morally
also.
The most serious misjudgments of pleasure are, we
believe, based chiefly upon an oversight and a mis
understanding, an oversight of the inherent many-
sidedness, one impulse taking the place of another so
easily and frequently that no one can lead to excess.
To employ an apparent paradox, man is literally
saved from pleasure by pleasures. The misunder
standing arises from a lack of comprehension of the
real nature of pleasure.
As to just what is the essential characteristic,
which in all cases makes a sensation or action pleas
urable, we are still entirely in the dark. We do not
even know what invariable attribute distinguishes it
from the painful, indeed by most of our modern psy
chologists this entire group of sensations are classed
together in what is termed the " pleasure-pain "
series. About all that we can say definitely is that
both are due to variations in the intensity of stimuli
and appear to be opposite ends of the same scale of
vibrations. Hence, " Variety " is literally " the spice
of life." Nor does there appear to be any constant
" LEBENSLUST." 235
relation between the intensity of the stimulus or the
suddenness of its variation and its pleasurable or
painful effect, except that violent stimuli and abrupt
variations seem to produce painful rather more often
than pleasant sensations. Probably the nearest ap
proach to a definition and distinction, and one which
certainly applies in a very large percentage of cases
is that of Mai-shall, that pleasure is the result of any
stimulus the response to which is easy and adequate
and draws only upon such energy as is already stored
up in the organism. When the response to the stim
ulus is inadequate and difficult and draws, as it
were, upon the energy needed for the very life of the
tissues, then pain results. This rule will not apply,
by any means, in all cases, but it will probably go
further than any other characterization that lias been
attempted.
And when we come to apply this definition in our
discussion, the problem alters greatly. If pleasure
includes not merely actions and responses which are
generally easy and require the expenditure of but
little energy, but also those involving the liberation
of large amounts of energy, providing this has already
been stored up, so to speak, then will the reproach of
" lotos-eater " be removed at once. And this defini
tion is strikingly true in practice. A life which is
" all bed, beer, and skittles, * as the old phrase goes,
is by no means the ideal life of pleasure ; on the con
trary, the keenest and most lasting pleasures of life
are those which result from the most strenuous exer
tions, the most patient and skilful generalship, and
236 THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO DARWIN.
the assumption of the greatest possible risks. Men
love success far more than ease, and honorable risk
than dishonorable safety.
To say that the intelligent pursuit of pleasure will
inevitably or even usually land men in either the
idiocy of idle luxury or the insanity of dissipation, is a
foul slander upon humanity. The pleasure of merely
plucking and eating ripe fruit however luscious,
is tame and insipid beside the triumph of stalking
the elk or bringing the wild-boar to bay. To roll
along the level highway upon the softest and most
luxurious of carriage-cushions, is not to be compared
for a moment to the delight and exhilaration of a wild
dash across country, risking, if needs be, limb and
life at every fence and brook simply in order to " ride
straight." I can conceive of no exhilaration more
delightfully intense, outside of warfare, than that of
the heaving bound beneath you of the thoroughbred
hunter as he rises to the six-foot hedge and you crane
forward to see how wide the ditch on the other side
may be. The hiss of the water along the half-buried
gunwale of the reeling sloop, is a far sweeter music
than the rippling of a thousand tiny wavelets upon
the sandy beach, as you lie basking in the sun.
The thoroughly manly man enjoys not merely ease
and luxury but also and far more, adventure, enter
prise, danger, laborious work even. Ask any true
sportsman and he will tell you that his real pleasure
lies in the excitement, the strain and the tactics of
the chase, not in the eating of the game. The hardest
work of the world is done from sheer love of it, not
" LEBENSLUST." 237
from a sense of duty. And almost anything that a
man can work vigorously at and with a fair measure
of success, he will enjoy no matter what his feelings
towards it when he began. We begin by working to
earn a living and end by loving our work, if it be
only respectable. There is a pleasure in doing what
ever we do easily and well, no matter how unattrac
tive it may be in itself. Hence most men really enjoy
their occupations, no matter ho\v hum-drum, and are
very proud of the way they perform their daily tasks.
The attitude of most men and all animals toward
their life-work is not that of a bitter and irksome
struggle for the mere means of existence, but of
vigorous and invigorating, joyous activity. The
"curse of Adam" is an almost unmixed blessing.
Vigorous and continued activity is not merely astern
necessity of existence, it is a means of progress and a
source of constant enjoyment as well. The " struggle
for existence " is severe, but it is joyous also, and
successful until it is ended by the Great Rest-Bringer.
Life is long and full of action and color. Disease
is short and death painless and instantaneous.
" Weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in
the morning." Joy has as marked a preponderance
over grief in the natural world, as good has over evil.
Always excepting that part of it discovered and
reported upon by that strangely-assorted pair of
deponents, the modern realist with his filth-worship,
and the ancient orthodox theologian with his devil-
worship. No one sees more of the sorrowful side of
life than the family physician. And yet no one will
238 THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO DARWIN.
more unhesitatingly affirm, that in ninety-nine cases
out of a hundred, even after the most terrible destruc
tion of limbs, of senses, of usefulness, after the crush
ing bereavement of those dearer than life itself, in
a brief period the balance of life adjusts itself again
in favor of, first, tolerability, then of joy. Not that
the beam rises to the same angle as before, by any
means, though it does this in a surprisingly large
proportion, but that it does reach the level and a little
more. No man who faces the situation bravely and
works hard and honestly at the task which lies with
in his powers, need fear permanent unhappiness.
The edge of grief or disappointment is most merci
fully dulled by the flight of time, the satisfaction
which comes of honest work well-done, never fails.
If there be anything of which both the physician and
the Darwinist are firmly convinced, it is the wonder
ful adaptability of both the human and the animal
organism. Given the bare possibility of existence
which includes either the power of vigorous effective
exertion, or of free communion with one s kind, and
happiness will ultimately result in the vast majority
of cases. The more closely and lovingly we study
any class of animals or stratum of human society,
the more firmly we become convinced that happiness
arid not misery is the rule. And not by a bare
majority either, but overwhelmingly. Life in all is
a struggle, but it breeds a superb set of healthy,
blameless appetites, the natural gratification of which
is an abundant reward for every exertion. The very
strenuousness of the struggle gives it an exhilaration
" LEBENSLUST." 239
as long as it is successful, and when it ceases to be so
death comes swiftly and usually painlessly. And we
must remember that in the lower animals there is
practically almost no fear of death, in the human
sense. It is doubtful whether they can even distinct
ly conceive of it and if they could, having never
invented a theology, they would have little reason to
dread it excessively.
The hunted animal flees not "for its life," for it is
probably beyond its powers to imagine itself ceasing
to exist, but to escape the pain which it believes the
teeth or weapons of its pursuer may inflict, or very
often in sheer, instinctive dread of his approach.
" Despair" and surrender are alike unknown to it,
and when it can run no longer it turns to bay and
dies fighting, probably feeling the fangs of its captors
but little more than soldiers do the mortal wounds
received in the thick of battle.
And I frankly confess that my own firm conviction
is that a large proportion of the " wretchedness " and
" unhappiness " of the world about us and below us,
both human and animal, has been "read into" it un
consciously by our nobly mistaken sympathy for our
fellow beings. We should suffer both physically and
mentally under such circumstances, and so must
they.
In short, while as keenly alive as ever to wrong
and suffering and as strenuous to right the one and
relieve the other wherever he sees them, the Darwin
ist is in large measure freed from that crushing con
ception of the preponderance of suffering and disap-
240 THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO DARWIN.
pointmeut in the life of the world, the " Weltschmerz "
which exerts such a powerful influence over our
views of life and destiny.
Nor does this joy of living fade or even waver in
the face of death. " Life is short," the moralist warns
us, but what of that ? If it be brave, vigorous and
joyous while it lasts, how could it be improved by
being made longer ? Death is simply the end of life,
not its destruction or reversal, and come soon or late,
it cannot rob us of a single joy experienced or undo
a single triumph won. " The lily of a day " was the
fairest thing the sun shone upon, and triumphed and
will be remembered as such, " e en though it fall and
die that night."
Life is short, but it is as long as we are ; aye, and
if we live to threescore and ten, as long as our desires.
To know that it must end sometime need not in any
way detract from our rational enjoyment of it while it
lasts. So long as it continues it is good, and when
it ceases, so do we, as individuals. The happiest life,
if it had no prospect of ending, would become terribly
monotonous. The only thing which could cast a
permanent gloom over life would be the fear of its
indefinite continuance.
The bucket brings up precisely a bucketful, whether
it be lowered into a hogshead or an ocean, once or a
hundred times, and we get out of life precisely what
we are able to contain and would get not a drop more
if we lived to be a thousand. And we human buckets
are usually filled to the limit of our utmost possibili
ties before we are fifty, although we may keep on
" LEBENSLUST." 241
fondly imagining ourselves to be hogsheads. Unless
our capacity could go on increasing indefinitely,
which it obviously does not, we could get no more
joy out of life in a thousand years than in seventy,
except in the matter of memories. If such an increase
could occur it would practically amount to the loss
of our identity. And from the point of view of the
effectiveness and progress of the race, we had much
better do this by death and allow a new generation
to take our place.
As for a future life in spheres celestial, we are
simply in the Socratic attitude, that as we have not
a scrap of ponderable evidence as to its character or
even existence, we should be most irrational to either
dread it or long for it.
We are fully content to
" Live long and happy
And in that thought die,
Glad for what was."
Content to rest and to live in our memories, our
descendants and our " works which do follow us,"
but unafraid of any awakening.
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