It was the final act in the great drama of "natural selection," which had been played upon the stage of the earth since the first appearance of living forms; the last and most ruthless of them all, for the instigating cause was no longer merely the pressure for a share of the food supply, but to this was added the lust for power and place, the hunger for wealth and dominion, the insatiable appetite for autocratic control. Millions upon millions of men were swept away by the sword, and by its attendant demons, famine and pestilence; and still the stronger and abler climbed to the top, the weaker and inferior succumbed; and the intellectual evolution of man went on with enhanced rapidity as the harvest of the sword was gathered in, and the merciless reapers of men swept in successive columns over the earth, each a stage higher in mental ability than the preceding.

This phase of human evolution is that of the era of human history. Before its advent man had no history. It would be as useful to attempt to give the history of the gorilla as of man in the early stages of his progress. History is the record of individuality, and in primitive times equality and communism prevailed, and the individual had not yet separated himself from the mass. Man had settled into the dull inertness of a stagnant pool, and the fierce winds of war were needed to break up his mental slothfulness and stir thought into healthful activity. There must be leaders before there can be history; the annals of mankind begin in hero worship; the relations of superior and inferior need to be established; and individual action and supremacy are the foundations upon which all history is built. Only by stirring up the deep pool of human life into seething turmoil and unrest could the tendency to stagnation be overcome, the best and most aspiring rising to the top, the dull and heavy sinking to the bottom, and the element of thought permeating the whole with its vitalizing spirit.

When this phase of evolution is reached, we cease for the first time to deal with species and genera in the mass and begin to deal with individuals, who now emerge from the general group and stand above and apart like great signal posts on the highway of progress. These heroes are not alone those of the sword. They are the leaders in art, in literature, in science, in thought, in every domain; the men who stand, above, supreme and shining, and toward whose elevation the whole mass below surges slowly but strenuously upward. The third phase of human evolution, therefore, is that of the emergence of the individual as the leader, lawgiver, teacher of mankind, each leader forming a goal for the emulation of all below. And this condition is the legitimate outcome of war, which, terrible as it always has been, was the only agency that could rapidly break up the stagnancy of early communism and send man upward in a swirl toward the heights of civilization.

To give the history of this phase of evolution would be to give the history of mankind, and would be aside from the purpose of this work. All that need be attempted, in support of our argument, is to present some general deductions from human history, indicating the leading features of the service man has received from war.

Conflict between man and man was at first vague and inconsequential. It was only after settled and organized communities, based originally on the family relation, and held together by the possession of property in common, had been formed, that war became more effective in its results. The chief of these results, in the early days, were two: the breaking up of the old equality of power and possession, and the development of larger and more powerful communities. The head man of the village community, or the herding clan, possessed some delegated authority but no political supremacy over his fellows. Equality existed alike in theory and in fact. Battle between neighboring clans was the first step toward breaking this up. The conquered clan became subordinated to the victorious one, and the chief of the victors, as the representative of his clan, exercised an authority over the subject community which he did not possess at home. The degree of subordination differed from the mild form of tribute-paying to that of personal slavery. But in either case we see the old condition of equality vanishing, and that of class distinctions and the relation of superior and inferior arising, while the power of the chief advances from a delegated authority to an established supremacy.

The second outcome of this early phase of war was an increase in the size of political groups. The conquered were forced to aid the conquerors in war as in peace; clans combined to resist aggression; minor communities grew into organized tribes; tribes developed into nations as a result of warlike operations. This growth in political organization was a necessary and inevitable result of continued warfare. The aggressors gathered all the strength possible. The assailed peoples did the same. Temporary alliances grew into permanent ones. Larger armies were formed, larger communities were organized, national development advanced at a rate tenfold, probably a hundredfold, more rapidly than it would have done had peaceful conditions persisted.

Side by side with tribal and national consolidation went on the growth in leadership. The head man became a war chief, the war chief a king. Success made him a hero to his people. He grew to be the lord of conquered tribes; into his hands fell the bulk of the spoils; the relation of equality of possessions vanished as the plunder taken by the army was distributed unequally among the victors. Below the principal leader came his ablest followers, each claiming and receiving a proportionate share in the new division of power and wealth. In short, when the era of war had become fully inaugurated, the old social and political relations of mankind were broken up with great rapidity; equality of power was replaced by inequality, which steadily grew more and more declared; equality of wealth in like manner vanished; in all directions the individual emerged from the mass, class distinctions became intricate, and the relations of rich and poor, of king, noble, citizen, and slave, completely replaced the old communal organization of mankind.

War was the great agent in this evolution. It might have emerged slowly in peace; it came with almost startling rapidity in war, and reached a degree of power on the one hand and subordination on the other that could scarcely ever have appeared had conditions of peace prevailed. With this growth of great nations came a rapid development in political science, in legal institutions, in social relations. An enormous advance was made, in a limited period, in the civilization of mankind; as a result, not of the devastation and slaughter of war, but of its influence upon human organization.

It was the principle of reward for ability to which the leaders of men owed their supremacy. When nations were organized this same principle took another and very useful form. The distribution of wealth had become strikingly unequal. There were endless grades of distinction between the supremely wealthy and the absolutely poor. The wealthy were ready to lavish their money in return for articles of pleasure and luxury. The poor, in their thirst for a share of wealth, were strongly stimulated to inventive activity in producing new and desirable wares. Inequality became the mainspring of business activity; thought and inventive ingenuity were strongly exercised; a rapid progress went on in the production of new devices, new methods, and new articles of necessity and luxury; manufacture flourished, commerce increased, civilization appeared, the whole as a legitimate outcome of the conditions brought about by war.

This phase of human evolution, as may be seen, was radically different from that already considered, arising from the development of sacerdotal influence and priestly power. They worked together, no doubt. The establishment of the great primitive empires, as a peaceful process, was greatly complicated by war, which tended steadily to increase the temporal power of the ruler and enable him in time to control by the sword alone. But it is interesting to find that long after the old system was practically overthrown its shadow still lay upon the nations. The powerful war monarchs of Assyria led their armies to conquest in the name of the national deity, whose vicegerents they claimed to be. The autocratic emperors of Rome went so far as to claim in some cases to be gods themselves. Even in modern Russia some of this dignity pertains to the emperor, as the supreme head of the national church. Old ideas are proverbially hard to kill.

But the mission of the priesthood by no means stopped here. The priests rose to influence as the teachers as well as the leaders of the people. The members of this class, set aside from manual occupations, and devoted to thought upon the relations of man to the divine, played an important part in the development of the human mind. As a result of their speculative activity of thought the old religious systems sank into the background; the simple worship of primitive times was overshadowed by intricate mythological systems, splendid in worship and creed; cosmogonies and philosophies were devised; and human thought, once fairly set loose in this field, went on with great energy and imaginative fervor.

Literature arose as a result of this activity of thought. It took at first the form of hymns, speculative essays, magical formulas, dogmas, ordinances of worship, etc. By degrees it grew more secular in form, until in the end secular literature arose. This was greatly stimulated by the conditions of inequality arising from war. In the same manner as the reward for merit in invention stimulated men to activity in the mechanical arts, so the hope of reward for literary production stirred up men to the composing of poems, histories, and other works of thought. In both directions, physical and mental, men were stimulated to the most active exertions by the conditions of inequality in wealth and power, and the consequent desire to obtain a share of the money lavished by the rich and the authority similarly lavished by the powerful.

The broad general view here taken must suffice for our consideration of this phase of human evolution. It brings the story of the development of man closely up to the present stage of political and social organizations and relations. It may be said, in conclusion of this section of our work, that the powerful agency of war, so active and important in the past, has in great part lost its utility in the present, and bids fair to be brought to an end before the world is much older. It is no longer needed, nearly or quite all that it is capable of doing for mankind being accomplished, while the equally powerful agencies of commerce, travel, leagues of nations, and other conditions of modern origin have taken its place.

War, while yielding many useful results, has given rise to others whose utility is questionable, and whose ill-effects it will take much time and effort to set aside. The inequality of power to which war gave rise continues in many parts of the world, and the inequality of wealth shows signs of increase instead of diminution. Once useful, they have developed to an injurious extent. The result is a state of unrest, discontent, and more or less active opposition, which constitutes a condition of permanent conflict, a deep dissatisfaction with existing institutions abnormal to a justly organized society. War has become in great measure useless; but the scaffolding from which it built up the edifice of civilization remains, and stands as a tottering ruin threatening to engulf mankind in its fall.

Ever since the triumph of autocracy in the Roman empire, the masses of mankind have steadily protested against an inequality that is alien to the natural rights of man. For century after century the struggle against undue exercise of power has gone on, and the hereditary lords of mankind have lost, stage by stage, their usurped power, until in the modern republic they have been replaced by the servants and chosen agents of the people. But the autocracy of wealth still holds its own, and is growing more and more formidable, and against this the wave of opposition is now rising. Everywhere man is earnestly and sternly demanding an equitable distribution of the productions of nature and art. What the outcome of this demand will be it is impossible to say. It must inevitably lead to some readjustment of the wealth of mankind; but only the slow process of social evolution can decide what this shall be.

We have endeavored in this brief treatise to trace the development of man from his primeval state as a tree-dwelling animal in the depths of the tropic woods, through the phases of his later condition as an erect surface dweller, his conflict with and dominion over the animal kingdom, his subsequent contest with the adverse powers of nature, and his final warfare with his fellows and emergence into civilization. Each of these contests has left its results; the first in the forest nomads of the eastern tropics, the second in the patriarchal herding tribes of the steppes and deserts, the village communities of Russia and the paternal empire of China, the third in the enlightened nations of Europe and America.

For how long a period this mighty drama of evolution has continued it is impossible to say. Its first phase must have been of interminable slowness; its second, while more rapid, still very deliberate; its third of much greater rapidity, yet extending over several thousands of years. Millions of years have probably passed away since it began, yet the period involved is none too long for the magnitude of the results, whose greatness can be seen if we contrast man's mental development with that of the lower animals during this period. Physically, the development of man has been inconsiderable—much less apparently than that of many other animals. Mentally, it has been enormous. The whole of nature's influences, in new and often adverse situations, have been brought to bear upon man's mind, and as the result we have civilized man as contrasted with the anthropoid ape. And the end is not yet. The era of war in man's development is near its close, and a new era of peace, under conditions of advanced mental and physical activity, seems about to begin. Its outcome no man can predict, but it may far surpass in beneficial results all that has gone before, and carry man upward to an extraordinarily elevated mental plane.



XII

THE EVOLUTION OF MORALITY

The evolution of man from his animal ancestry has been a composite phenomenon, one by no means confined to the physical and intellectual conditions which we have so far considered, but embracing also features of moral and spiritual progress. The origin and growth of these need also to be reviewed, if we would present a fully rounded sketch of human evolution. So far as his physical form is concerned, man became practically completed ages ago, as the supreme effort of nature in the moulding and vitalizing of matter. When the arena of the struggle for existence became transferred from the body to the mind, variation in the body, once so active, rapidly declined; and with the full employment of the intellect in the conflict with nature, physical evolution ceased, except in minor particulars, and the organic structure of man became practically fixed. The human animal, therefore, as a physical species, has reached a stage of permanence. And this may be regarded as the supreme result of material evolution in animals; or at least it may be affirmed that, while man continues to exist, no member of the lower animal tribes can possibly develop to become his rival.

But though man is not markedly distinct as a physical species from his anthropoid ancestor, the process of evolution has not ceased, but has gone on in him rapidly and immensely. The strain has simply been transferred from the body to the mind, and to the extent that the mental characteristics are more flexible and yield more readily to formative influences, the mind has surpassed the body in rapidity of evolutionary variation. Within a period during which the lower animals have remained almost unchanged, man has varied enormously in mental conditions, and to-day may be looked upon, not merely as a distinct species, but practically as a new order, or class, of animals, as far removed intellectually from the mammals below him as they are from the insects or mollusks.

If now we turn from the physical and intellectual to the ethical stage of development, it will be to perceive as marked and decided a process of evolution. The change has, perhaps, been even greater, since in the lower animals the moral faculties are more rudimentary than the intellectual. But, on the other hand, the moral development in man has been much inferior to the intellectual. Therefore, though the foundation was lower, the edifice has not reached nearly so great a height, and man to-day stands in moral elevation considerably below his intellectual level.

It was formerly the custom to look upon man as the only intellectual and moral animal, the forms below him being credited solely with hereditary instincts. This belief is no longer entertained by those familiar with the results of modern research. Evidences of unquestionable powers of thought have been traced in the lower animals, imagination and reason being alike indicated. The elephant, for instance, is evidently a thinking animal, and is capable of overcoming difficulties and adapting itself to new situations, using methods not unlike those which man himself might display under similar circumstances. Its gratitude for favors and remembrance of and revenge for injuries are evidences of its possession of the moral attributes. The recorded instances of displays of reason in the dog, man's constant companion, are innumerable. Intellectual attributes are still more pronounced in the ape tribe, as indicated in a preceding chapter, where it was argued that man began his development in intellect at a somewhat advanced stage.

The same cannot be said in regard to his moral evolution. In this respect the level from which man emerged was a much lower one. If his moral growth may be symbolized as a great tree, it is one not very deeply rooted in the world below him. Yet it doubtless has grown out of the soil of animal life, and its finer tendrils and fibres may be traced to a considerable depth in this fertile soil.

Before proceeding with this subject, it is important to devote some attention to the characteristics of the moral attributes, concerning which there is much diversity of opinion. There has been abundance of theorizing upon the principles of ethics, thinkers dividing themselves into two widely separated groups. In the one school, the intuitive, the principles of morality are looked upon as inherent in the soul of man, unfolding as the plant unfolds from its seed. In the other school, the inductive, morality is claimed to be founded upon selfishness, the moving principle of human actions being the desire to avoid pain and attain pleasure. Each school makes a strong argument, which goes far to indicate that each is based upon a truth, and therefore that neither has the whole truth.

The fault would appear to lie in the attempt to make morality a unit. In our view this unity does not exist. While both schools may be partly right, neither would seem to be wholly right, and they appear to be pulling at the two ends of a single chain. Ethics, in short, may be regarded as composed of unlike halves, which unite centrally to form a whole. It may aid to reconcile the conflicting systems of theorists if it be held that the inductive half of ethics is the product of the reasoning powers and outer experience, the intuitive half the product of feeling and inner development; while both meet and harmonize in life as reason and feeling harmonize in the mind.

It is interesting to find that it is the intuitive, not the inductive, element of the moral attributes that we find principally developed in the lower animals. This is the outgrowth of instinct, not of thought; the development of that principle of attraction which manifests itself in all nature, and which, when associated with consciousness, becomes what we know as love, affection, or sympathy. It is a powerful and pervading force in all matter, intelligent and unintelligent, and in conscious beings falls naturally among the emotions. Like all the passions, it is instinctive in origin, though it may come under the control of the intellect as the mind develops. In the lower animal world it is manifested as a vigorous attraction, the sexual. In the higher animals this attraction expands and grows complex. The attraction between the sexes becomes love, and in its full unfoldment may join two individuals together for life and influence most of their actions. To the attraction between the sexes should be added that between parents and children, the parental and filial, and that between associates, the tribal or social, the latter, though weaker, of the same character.

With these bonds reason has nothing to do. It does not form them and would seek in vain to sever them. They belong to a part of the mental constitution which lies outside the kingdom of thought, and they, therefore, often act counter to the selfish consideration of personal safety. The love bond, indeed, in its full strength, seems to constitute a partial loss of individuality. Mates will suffer pain and endure physical injury for each other or for their offspring to as great an extent as if these constituted a part of themselves, and as if their actions were performed in self-defence.

With this brief review of the philosophy of the ethical sentiments, we may proceed to a consideration of the facts. While the rudimentary form of the sentiment in question is manifest far down in the descending grades of animal life, it expands into what we may fairly term love or affection only in the higher forms. Romanes, in his "Animal Intelligence," remarks: "As regards emotions, it is among birds that we first meet with a conspicuous advance in the tenderer feelings of affection and sympathy. Those relating to the sexes and the care of progeny are in this class proverbial for their intensity, offering, in fact, a favorite type for the poet and moralist. The pining of the 'love-bird' for its absent mate, and the keen distress of a hen on losing her chickens, furnish abundant evidence of vivid feelings of the kind in question. Even the stupid-looking ostrich has heart enough to die for love, as was the case with a male in the Rotund of the Jardin des Plantes, who, having lost his mate, pined rapidly away."

Among social and communal animals the sentiment of sympathy widens to embrace all the members of the tribe, a characteristic which is very strongly manifested in so low an organism as the ant. As an example of this feeling among birds, Romanes quotes an interesting illustration from Edward, the naturalist. The latter had shot and wounded a tern, but before he could reach it, the helpless bird was carried off by its companions. Two of these took hold of it by the wings and flew with it several yards over the water. They then relinquished their burden to two others, and the process continued in this way until they at length reached a rock at some distance. When the hunter, eager for his prize, pursued them, the sympathetic birds again took up their wounded companion and flew off with it again over the water.

Abundant instances of this sentiment of social affection could be quoted from the mammalia. It is by no means confined to members of a species, but may extend to very unlike species. No one needs to be told of the warm affection so often shown by the dog for its master, a love which will lead it to dare wounds or death in his service, or in the protection of his property. This altruistic sentiment strongly exists in the monkeys. Examples of the ardent feeling of these animals for their fellows have been given in a preceding chapter, and many more might be quoted, if necessary. It must suffice here to quote a single further instance cited by Romanes, and relating to a small monkey which was taken ill on shipboard, where there were several others of different species.

"It had always been a favorite with the other monkeys, who seemed to regard it as the last born and the pet of the family; and they granted it many indulgences which they seldom conceded to one another. It was very tractable and gentle in its temper, and never took advantage of the partiality shown to it. From the moment it was taken ill, their attention and care of it redoubled; and it was truly affecting and interesting to see with what anxiety and tenderness they tended and nursed the little creature. A struggle often ensued between them for priority in these offices of affection; and some would steal one thing and some another, which they would carry to it untasted, however tempting it might be to their own palates. They would take it up gently in their forepaws, hug it to their breasts, and cry over it as a fond mother would over her suffering child."

With the human race the love sentiment does not usually display the singleness of energy shown among the lower animals. It is affected and often checked in its development by an intricate series of influences, which act on savage and civilized man alike. The family formed the primitive human group, its linking elements being the sexual attraction between man and woman and the fervent affection between parents and children. These feelings, while strong in certain directions, were crude and uneven. In savage tribes to-day the wife is an ill-treated drudge. Yet the husband will protect his wife and children from danger at risk of his life. The maternal instinct seems still stronger. The mother often acts as if the child were an actual part of herself. Danger or injury to it produces in her a mental agony, the close equivalent of its fear or pain, and she will endure suffering and peril in its protection with an impulse beyond the control of reason.

This sentiment, in a weakened form, extended from the family to the group; and the success of man in gaining the mastery over the other animals was doubtless greatly aided by the strong bond of social affinity existing between the members of a group. They worked together in a fuller sense than any other animals except the ants and bees.

From the original social group another and closer community seems gradually to have developed, the group of kindred. This was a natural outgrowth from the family, whose bond of affection was extended to include more distant relatives, until there emerged the organized group of kindred known as the "Village Community," which seems everywhere to have preceded civilization. This bond of kindred gradually extended, combining men into larger and larger groups, until the clan, the horde, and the tribe emerged, their members all linked together by the reality or the fiction of common descent. Such was the form of organization that existed in Greece and Rome in their early days, and made its influence felt far down into their later history. It existed indeed, at some period, over almost all the earth.

As the group widened, the bond of sympathy weakened. Love in the family found its counterpart in fellow-feeling in the tribe, in patriotism in the nation. It is undoubtedly true that desire for personal protection is one of the strong influences which bind men into societies. The hope of advantage in other directions and the pleasure of social intercourse are other combining forces. Yet below these rational elements has always abided the emotional element, the sympathetic attraction which binds kindred closely together, and which exerts some degree of influence on all members of the same group or nation.

The development of the ethical principle in mankind is largely due to the extension of the sentiment of social sympathy. For ages it was confined to the immediate group. Such was the case even in civilized Greece, intellectually one of the most advanced of peoples, but morally very contracted. The Greeks were long divided into minor groups, with the warmest sentiment of patriotism uniting the members of each community, while their common origin bound all the Hellenes together. But this feeling failed to cross the borders of the narrow peninsula of Greece, all peoples beyond these borders being viewed as barbarians, in whose pleasures and pains no interest was felt, and whose misfortunes produced no stir of sympathy in the Grecian heart. Even Aristotle taught that Greeks owed no more duties to barbarians than to wild beasts, and a philosopher who declared that his affection extended to the whole people of Greece was thought to be remarkably sympathetic.

The Romans were equally narrow in their early days, and not until the empire extended to the outer borders of the civilized world did this narrowness give way to a more expanded sympathy. The brotherhood of mankind, indeed, was taught by Socrates, Cicero, and others of the ancient moral philosophers, yet these seeds of philosophy fell in very sterile soil and took root with discouraging slowness. Philosophers elsewhere taught the dogma of universal love,—Confucius among the Chinese, Gautama among the Hindoos,—but their teachings have borne little fruit in the great, stagnant peoples of Asia, in whom the narrowness of semicivilization prevails.

The teachings of Christ, whose code of morality was the intuitive one, "Love one another," have been far more effective. Christianity became the religion of Europe, since then the most progressive part of the world, and with every step of progress in civilization the Christ doctrine of charity and sympathy reached a higher and broader stage. To-day it has attained, in Europe and America, a wide degree of development, and the vast extension of human intercourse through the mediums of travel, commerce, and telegraphic communication is, for the first time in human history, beginning to lift the doctrine of the universal brotherhood of man from the plane of a philosophic dogma toward that of an established fact. The range of sympathy is narrow yet, selfishness predominates, the truly altruistic are the few, the feebly sympathetic and coldly selfish are the many; yet it must be admitted that there has been a great development of altruism during the nineteenth century, and the promise of the coming of Christ's kingdom on the earth is greater to-day than at any former period in the history of mankind.

The love principle is the innate moral element of the universe. Its rudimentary form is the attraction between atoms, which expands into the attraction between spheres. We see a development of it in the magnetic and electric attractions, and a higher one in the sexual attraction that exists in the lowest organisms. Its expansion continues until it reaches the high level of human love and social sympathy. But throughout its whole development consciousness takes no part in its origin. While conscious of its existence, we do not consciously call it into existence. Men and women "fall in love"; they do not reason themselves into affection. Those we love become in a measure a part of ourselves, we feel their sufferings and endure their afflictions, not through the nerves of the body, but through the finer ones of the mind,—a plexus of spiritual nerves which stretch unseen from soul to soul. So strong is this sympathetic affinity that Comte was induced to look upon mankind as an organism, and it gave rise in the mind of Leslie Stephens to the conception of a common "social tissue."

Love and law rule the universe. It is this second moral element, that of law, which we have next to consider. Inductive morality had its origin in experience; it assumed the form of social restriction, then of fixed law and precept, and culminated in the sense of duty—a conscientious avoidance of that which was thought to be wrong, and an earnest desire to do what was looked upon as right.

The history of this phase of morality differs essentially from that of the phase we have just considered. The sense of duty, the conscientious sentiment, so highly developed in man, seems largely non-existent in the lower animals, so far as observation has taught us. Yet it is not quite wanting, its rudiment is there, and this rudiment is capable of development. It may be, indeed, that a highly developed sense of duty exists in the ants and bees, to judge from their diligent labors for the benefit of the community. But the clearest examples of conscientious performance of duty are those seen in the case of the dog, in which animal intimate association with man has developed something strongly approaching a conscience. A dog needs only to be well treated to display a sense of dignity and a self-respect analogous to these feelings in man. A sensitive resentment against injustice in high-caste and carefully nurtured dogs has often been observed; while shame for an act which the animal knows to be forbidden has been seen in a hundred instances. The sense of duty is occasionally very strongly developed. Many striking examples of this are on record. A dog will often defend his master's property with the greatest devotion, letting no temptation draw him away from the path of duty.

An instance has been related to the writer in which an extraordinary display of this feeling was made. A gentleman, on coming home at night, found he had forgotten his key, and attempted to enter the house by the window of a room in which his dog was on duty as a night-watch. To his surprise and annoyance the animal would not permit him to enter, and attacked him every time he tried to climb in. The animal knew him well, responded to his attempts to fondle it, but the moment he made an attempt to enter the window it became hostile and seemed ready to spring upon him. In its small brain was the feeling that no one, master or stranger, had the right to enter that house at night by the window, and it was there to perform its duty without regard to persons. In the end, the gentleman was obliged to leave and seek shelter elsewhere.

The development of the sense of duty and the growth of moral restriction in primitive man were probably very slow, much more so than the evolution of intelligence. The social habit of man doubtless rendered necessary, at an early period, some restraints on the actions of individuals, and these in time gained the strength of unwritten law; but many of them were scarcely what we should call moral obligations. Many such restrictions exist among savage tribes to-day, and to these we must turn for examples of their character. We, for instance, look upon theft and lying as immoral practices, but such is not the case with savages generally, most of whom will steal if the opportunity offers, while they will lie in so transparent and useless a manner as to indicate that they see nothing wrong in this practice. And yet the aborigines of India, many of whom are very immoral according to our standard, are often strongly averse to untruthfulness. "A true Gond," says Mr. Grant, "will commit a murder, but he will not tell a lie." It is well known that truthfulness was one of the chief virtues of the ancient Persians, a virtue that was accompanied by much which we would call immoral. The Hindoo devotee is exceedingly tender of the lives of animals, while he is often callous to human suffering. Disregard of human suffering, indeed, showed itself strongly through all the past ages, men being slaughtered with as little compunction as if they were so many wild beasts, while frightful tortures were inflicted with an extraordinary absence of humane feeling. And these excesses were committed by persons who in the ordinary affairs of life were frequently tender in feeling and conscientious in action.

In truth, moral development from this point of view has always shown a one-sidedness that goes far to discredit the doctrine of intuitive conceptions of right and wrong. The indications are strong that rules of conduct are not inherent in the human mind, that men become moral to the extent that they are taught the principles of justice, and grow one-sided in their ideas of virtue through incompleteness in their moral education. What we call sinfulness is largely a matter of custom and convention. Men cannot properly be said to sin when their actions are checked by no conscientious scruples, and what one people would consider atrocious instances of wrong-doing, might be looked upon as innocent and even estimable by a people with a different moral standard. Religion has much to do with this. The human sacrifices and cannibal feasts of the Aztec Indians, for instance, were regarded by them as good deeds, obligations which they owed to their gods. Yet this people had attained to some of the refined practices and moral ideas of civilization.

The leading principles of correct human conduct are few and simple. They were arrived at early in the history of human thought, and little has since been added to them. They arose as results of human experience, as necessary principles of restraint in developing communities, and were nearly all extant in prehistoric times as the unwritten laws of social organization. What creed-makers did was to put these ancient axioms of morality on record, and offer them to the world as codes of religious observance. They could not have been of primitive origin, since the most of them do not exist among the savage tribes still with us. There is nothing, indeed, to show that any idea of sinfulness exists in the minds of the lowest savages, the rules of conduct which they possess being such regulations as are necessary to the existence of the most undeveloped community.

Of the various codes of morals, much the best known to us is that given to the Israelites by Moses, the famous "Ten Commandments." The most of these—as of all such codes—were evidently legal in origin, rules necessary for the existence of a civilized society, restrictions controlling the conduct of men toward one another. It was the creed-makers who first gave such legal restrictions the strength of moral obligations, and announced that their infraction would be punished by divine agencies, even if they should escape human retribution.

Many hurtful acts, indeed, came to be viewed as crimes alike against God and man, and punishable in the interests of both. Political and moral obligations thus shaded together; some of the evils of the world being punished by human agencies alone, some by divine, some by both. It must be said, however, that throughout the whole progress of human civilization the influence of moral obligations has been rising, while the necessity for political laws has declined in like proportion. In ancient times the penalties for crimes against the community were terribly severe, while religion threatened those who offended the divine powers with frightful future punishments. The necessity for such severe restrictions has long been decreasing, and the more vividly it is felt that immoral deeds or debased thoughts and purposes will be visited by a spiritual retribution, the less necessity is there for laws and penalties. Thus the limitation of human actions by government is growing less necessary than of old, in conformity with the growing sense of spiritual degradation in evil and of spiritual elevation in good deeds. Mild laws have succeeded the severe edicts of the past, and with a considerable section of the community restrictive laws have become useless, conscience taking the place of law. In such men the impulse to evil deeds dies unfulfilled, and the penalty for wrong-doing within themselves may be more severe than that which the community would inflict. In the souls of such men sits a spiritual tribunal by which evil thoughts are tried and punished before they can develop into evil acts.

This consideration of the development of the moral principles and dogmas has been necessarily brief. In what direction it is leading must be evident to all, and we can with assurance look forward to a condition of human society in which conscience will have become a stronger element of the intellect than now, the sense of moral obligation a more prevailing sentiment, and legal restriction a less necessary governmental requirement.

Of all the isms of the day altruism is far the noblest and most promising. In this opponent of selfism, this regard for the rights and happiness of others equally with our own, we find the link which binds together the two halves of the moral principle. The love sentiment on the one hand, the sense of duty on the other, meet and combine in the zeal of altruism, for which a truly developed conscience is merely another term. Those who have the good of others strongly at heart, who are truly Christian in a practical realization of the brotherhood of mankind, can safely be set free from all the reins of law, and trusted to do the right thing from innate feeling instead of outside compulsion. And, trusting in the future full development of the altruistic sentiment, we can hopefully look forward to a time in which the moral law will exist alone, conscience become the controlling force in human actions, and government let fall the whip which it has so long held in threat over the shrinking back of man.



XIII

MAN'S RELATION TO THE SPIRITUAL

The purpose of this work has been to trace the evolutionary origin of man, in his ascent from the lower animal world to his full stature as the physical and intellectual monarch of the kingdom of life. But to round up the story of human evolution it seemed necessary to consider man from the moral standpoint, and it now appears equally desirable to review his relations to the spiritual element of the universe. Having dealt with the development of man as a mortal being, we have now to regard him as a possibly immortal being.

This outlook into the supreme domain of nature lifts us, for the first time in our work, definitely above the lower world of life. There is nothing to show that the animals below man have any conception of the spiritual. It is true that there are various statements on record which seem to indicate in some animals, the horse and the dog, for instance, a dread of unseen powers, a recognition of some element in nature which is invisible to the eyes of man. But what these facts indicate, what influences affect the rudimentary intellect of these animals in such instances, no one is able to say. Though some vague recognition of powers or existences beyond the visible may arise in their narrow minds, it does not probably pass beyond the level of instinct, and doubtless lies almost infinitely below man's conception of the spiritual. In this stage of intellectual development, then, we have to do with a condition which seems to belong solely to man, or has but a germinal existence in the lower organic kingdom.

In fact, primitive man may well have been as devoid of the conception of a realm of spirit as was his anthropoid ancestor. The lowest savages of to-day are almost, if not quite, lacking in such a conception, and are destitute of anything that can fairly be called religion. Where apparent religious ideas exist among them we cannot be sure to what extent they have been infused by civilized visitors, or how far ardent missionaries, in their anxiety to discover some trace of religion in savages, have themselves inadvertently suggested the beliefs which they triumphantly record. The Pygmies of Africa, the Negritos of Oceanica, and various debased tribes elsewhere, may possibly be quite destitute of native religious conceptions, at least of a higher grade than those which move the horse and dog to a dread of the unseen. It should be borne in mind that these tribes have for thousands of years been in some degree of contact with more developed races and subject to educative influences, and the crude religious conceptions which some travellers attribute to them may well have been derived, not original.

Investigation in this field certainly gives us abundant warrant to believe that primitive man, on whose mind no influences of education could act, was destitute of religion, and that man's conception of the unseen arose gradually, as one important phase of the development of his intellect. Any attempt to trace the stages of this religious development is far beyond our purpose, even if we were capable of doing it. It must suffice to say that man everywhere, when he emerges into history as a semicivilized being, is abundantly supplied with mythological and other religious conceptions which indicate a long preceding evolution in this field of thought.

For extended ages the realm of the unseen has been acting upon the mind of man; filling him with dread of malevolent and reverence for beneficent powers, inspiring him to acts of worship, peopling his imagined heavens with imagined deities, and giving rise to an extraordinary variety of deific tales and mythological ideas. The literature of this subject would fill a library in itself, and is almost abundant enough to supply one with reading for a lifetime. Yet it is largely, if not wholly, ideal; it is in great part based on false conceptions and misdirected imaginings; it rarely adduces evidence, and such evidence as is offered is always questionable; in short, scientific investigation and the critical pursuit of facts have taken no part in the development of religious systems, and a deep cloud of doubt envelops them all.

It is by no means our purpose to seek to throw discredit on any of the great religions of the world. To say that they have been products of evolution is not to invalidate them. Much that is true and solid has arisen through evolution. To say that they lack scientific evidence is not to question their validity. Many of the subjects with which they deal lie beyond the reach of scientific evidence. Science has hitherto dealt strictly with the physical; it has made almost no effort to test the claims of the spiritual. In fact, the highest of these claims, that of the existence of a deity, must lie forever beyond its reach. God may exist, and science grope for Him through eternity in vain. Finite facts can never gauge the infinite. Proofs and disproofs alike have been offered of the existence of an infinite deity, but the problem remains unsolved. None of these proofs or disproofs are positive; they all depend on ideal conceptions, and ideas are always open to question; positive facts on either side of the argument are, and are always likely to be, wanting, and the belief in God must be based on other than scientific grounds.

But when we come down to the lower levels of the domain of the spiritual we find ourselves on firmer ground. Here we are dealing with the finite, not with the infinite, and nothing that is finite can lie beyond the boundaries of investigation, however long it may take to reach it. The question of the existence of spirits, for instance,—that much mooted problem of the immortality, or at least of the future existence, of man, which forms so prominent an element in modern religion,—dwells within the possible reach of science, and the attempt to deal with it by scientific evidence may reasonably be made. When we pass beyond the realm of the senses we find ourselves in a kingdom peopled by stupendous forms and forces,—space, time, matter, energy, and perhaps infinite consciousness,—all in their ultimate conditions too vast for the finite mind to grasp, all presenting problems open to speculation, but beyond the reach of demonstration. But below these lie finite possibilities which the human mind may now be, or may become, capable of comprehending, and prominent among these lies the problem just mentioned, that of the existence of a spiritual substratum in man, a soul which is capable of surviving the death of the body. This is a subject with which all of us are deeply and intimately concerned, and it may be well to close this volume with a brief glance at its status as a scientific question.

The belief in the immortality of man is comparatively modern in origin. There is no satisfactory evidence that any such belief existed among the old Jews, or that it arose in Palestine before the time of Christ. It arose at an earlier period in India and Persia, but everywhere it was late in its appearance as a well-defined doctrine. Yet, while positive evidence is wanting, there can be little doubt that crude and vaguely formulated ideas of the existence of man after death have been very long entertained. The traditions of all peoples that have a faith above that of fetichism contain stories of the apparition of spirits of human origin, and when we reach civilized peoples and more advanced religions we find these in abundance. The annals of Christendom are full of them. They are equally abundant in the centres of other developed forms of faith. If we could accept these legends of the emergence of spirits through the thin veil that separates time from eternity as established facts, the problem would no longer need solution. As it stands, however, the great mass of such narratives are utterly lacking in evidence of a character which science can admit. They are bare, unsustained statements, thousands of which would be far outweighed by a single one fortified by demonstrated facts. Occasionally, indeed, the story of an apparition has been closely investigated, and there are a few cases of this kind handed down from the past which seem reasonably well established. But any statement coming from prescientific days is open to doubt; methods of investigation then were not what they are now; the dogma of the existence of spirit is too important a one to be accepted on any but incontrovertible evidence, and the vast sum of statements of apparitions which have come to us from the past, or from the non-scientific peoples of the present, must be dismissed with the one verdict, not proven.

There is one important fact, however, connected with the question of spiritual appearances, which is worthy of some consideration. It is a fixed rule in the history of opinions that beliefs founded on imagination or misconception have declined with the advance of enlightenment, and many conceptions, once strongly entertained, have faded and vanished in the light of new thought, or where retained have been so only by the ignorant and unreasoning. It is of interest to find that this has not been the case with the belief in spiritual manifestations. This has held its own to the present time, and, while it is largely sustained by the unintelligent and credulous, it can claim a considerable body of intelligent adherents to-day, even in the most enlightened nations. This belief, known as spiritism, with the manifestations upon which it is founded, lies open, therefore, to modern scientific investigation; and this has been, to some extent, applied to it, with, in various instances, rather startling results.

It is certainly of significance to find that a number of prominent scientists, thoroughly skilled in the arts of investigation, have attacked this problem with the purpose of annihilating it, and have ended in becoming convinced of the truth of spiritism. It may suffice to mention two of the most striking instances of this. In the early days of the spiritist propaganda, Robert Hare, a famous chemist of Philadelphia, entered upon an investigation of the so-called spiritual phenomena with the declared purpose of proving them to be fraudulent. His observations were long continued, his tests varied and delicate, and he ended by himself ardently adopting the belief he had set out to abolish. Somewhat later William Crookes of London, an equally famous chemist and physicist, entered upon a similar investigation, and with like results. The tests applied by these men were strictly scientific, and of the exhaustive character suggested by their long experience in chemical investigation; and their conversion to the tenets of spiritism, as a result of their experiments, was a marked triumph to the advocates of the doctrine. Various others of admitted high intelligence, who made a similar investigation and were similarly converted, might be named. Two of the best known of these were Judge Edmonds, of the circuit court of New York, and Alfred Russel Wallace of England, who shared with Darwin the honor of originating the theory of natural selection.

While these, and others of scientific education, were converted to spiritism, many investigators came to an opposite conclusion, while a similar negative result was reached in the investigations of several committees of scientists. The latest and most persistent attempt to search into the reality of phenomena of this character has been that made by the London Society for Psychical Research, whose investigations have extended over years and have yielded numerous striking and suggestive results. The most important conclusion at which the members of this society have so far arrived is the hypothesis of Telepathy, or the seeming power of one mind to influence the thoughts of another, occasionally over long distances, in a method that appears analogous to that of wireless telegraphy. The evidences in favor of this doctrine are so numerous that it has been somewhat widely accepted, and the title applied to it has come into general use. It indicates, if true, remarkable powers in the mind of man, capabilities that seem far to transcend those of the ordinary intellectual activities.

This is one side of the case. The other side now calls for presentation. This is that the great body of scientists utterly reject the theory of spiritism, and look upon its manifestations as due to fraud, misconception, credulity, or some other of the weaknesses to which human nature is liable. As regards the opinions arrived at by the prominent scientists mentioned, these men are looked upon by their fellows of the great scientific body as mentally warped, or as having allowed themselves to be victimized by impostors. The fact that Professor Crookes has continued one of the most acute and deep searching of investigators into the phenomena of physics, and that his results in this direction are accepted without question, and that Professor Wallace is acknowledged to be one of the leading thinkers of the day, has not sufficed to clear them of the doubt which rests upon their sanity or their critical judgment in this particular, and the very attempt of any one to investigate the so-called spiritual manifestations is widely looked upon as an evidence of credulity or some greater mental weakness.

This result may seem singular, yet it is not without abundant warrant. It must be borne in mind that the phenomena in question differ essentially in character from those with which science is usually concerned. The field of scientific investigation is distinctly the material; the facts with which it deals are those apparent to the senses, or which can be tested by material instruments; its discoveries are generally susceptible of but one interpretation; its methods are capable of being indefinitely repeated, and its results, if justly interpreted, are unvarying in character. None of these postulates fully applies to the spiritistic investigation. Here the conditions differ, the results vary, the methods can rarely be exactly repeated, conscious beings, instead of unconscious instruments, are the agents employed, and the secret thoughts and purposes of such agents are very likely to vitiate the result, and open a field of doubt which does not exist in the investigation of the inorganic world.

This is one of the causes of the doubt of scientists. It is not the only or the chief cause. The latter is the fact that the claims of spiritism lift man into an entirely new domain of the universe, remove him from the great field of the material with which he is physically affiliated and to which his senses are closely adapted, and place him in a region beyond the scope of the senses, a vast kingdom which is held to underlie or subtend the physical, and which the ordinary outlook of the scientist fails to perceive. It requires no strain of the imagination to admit the existence of a new constituent of the atmosphere. It requires a great strain to admit the existence of a new constituent of the universe, a vast spiritual substratum to the domain of matter. Religion, with its ideal tests, has long maintained this to be a fact. Science, with its rigid material tests, sternly questions it, and demands that the existence of an inhabited spiritual realm shall be incontestably proved by scientific evidence before it can be accepted.

This demand is a reasonable one. The world is growing rapidly more scientific, and the old method of arriving at conclusions is daily losing strength. Beliefs based on ideal or imaginative postulates, once strong, are now weak. Faith founded on ancient authority is active still, but promises to become obsolete. The way of science is growing to be the way of the world, and in the time to come intelligent men will doubtless demand incontestable evidence of any fact which they are asked to accept.

As regards the phenomena in question, however, it cannot be said that they have been fairly or fully investigated by scientists. They have been set down as the work of charlatans, and their apparent results ascribed to fraud, collusion, credulity, and mental obliquity in general. The fact, that of the scientists who have exhaustively investigated the spiritistic phenomena, a considerable number have accepted them as valid, has had no effect upon scientists as a body, who, in this particular, occupy the position which they accuse non-scientists of maintaining, that of forming opinions without investigating phenomena.

This attitude of the scientific world toward these problematical occurrences is quite comprehensible. Throughout the nineteenth century the attention of scientists has been almost wholly directed toward the investigation of the forms and forces of matter, the phenomena and principles of the visible universe. In this they entered, at the opening of the century, upon an almost virgin field, which they have wrought with great diligence and with remarkable results. It is very possible, however, that in the twentieth century no such undivided allegiance will be given to the phenomena of matter, but that the attention of scientists will be largely diverted from the physical to the psychical field of investigation, which may prove to be a far broader and more intricate domain than we now have any conception of.

Psychical phenomena have attracted some attention during the recent century. One by one the problems of hypnotism, unconscious cerebration, double consciousness, telepathy, spiritism, and the like, all at first set down as unworthy of consideration, have forced themselves upon the attention of observers, and each of them has been found to present conditions amply worthy of investigation. This work has hitherto been performed by occasional individuals, but the number of workers in experimental psychics is steadily increasing, and their domain of research broadening, and we may reasonably look forward to results approaching, perhaps exceeding, in interest those reached in material investigation.

There is a whole world before us, that of the mind and its phenomena, fully equal in interest and importance to the world of matter, and presenting as numerous and difficult problems. Hitherto it has largely been dealt with from the ideal or metaphysical standpoint; only recently has it been subjected to physical analysis, and already with striking results. During the century before us it is likely to attract a wide and active circle of investigators, with what results it is impossible to predict. This is the only way in which the problem of the existence or non-existence of a spiritual life can be solved to the satisfaction of those of a scientific turn of mind, and this solution must be left to the future to attain.

In the present work we are concerned with man's past rather than his future. It is what man has come from, not what he is going to, that forms the subject of our inquiries. We have been led into these remarks simply as an outcome of a brief consideration of man's relations to the spiritual element of the universe, and may close our work with the suggestion that the problem of human evolution may be immensely greater than that involved in the study of the ancestry of man.



THE DAWN OF REASON Or, Mental Traits in the Lower Animals

By JAMES WEIR, Jr., M.D.

Author of "The Psychical Correlation of Religious Emotion and Sexual Desire" etc.

16mo. Cloth. $1.25

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Review of Reviews.

"This book presents evidences of mental action of the lower animals in a clear, simple, and brief form. The author has avoided technicalities, and has also resisted the temptation of the psychologist to indulge in metaphysics. Dr. Weir has relied for evidence on the results of his own independent study of biology at first hand, disregarding the second-hand data used by many of the authors once regarded as standard authorities in this department of research."

The Nation:

"The title raised in our mind some vague fears that we might find physiology and psychology mixed up inexpertly with metaphysics; but we see in the writer a close observer, who takes his stand on firm ground, and goes into the objective world of animals for his facts."

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THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

66 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK

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Transcriber's note

The following changes have been made to the text:

Page 133: "these forests dwarfs" changed to "these forest dwarfs".

Page 146: "adepts in the art of concealment" changed to "adept in the art of concealment".

THE END