Civilisation: Its Cause and Cure, and Other Essays

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Contents

The Science of the Future : A Forecast, ... Defence of Criminals : A Criticism of Morality, Exfoliation : Lamarck versus Darwin,

PAGB I

51 82

II

However all this may be, the question immediately before us — having established the more healthy, though more limited, condition of the pre-civilisation peoples — is, why this lapse or fall 1 What is the meaning of this manifold and intensified manifestation of Disease — physical, social, intellectual, and moral ? what is its place and part in the great whole of human evolution?

And this involves us in a digression, which must occupy a few pages, on the nature of Health.

When we come to analyse the conception of Disease, physical or mental, in society or in the individual, it evidently means, as already hinted once or twice, Iobz of unity. Health, therefore, should mean unity, and it is curious that the history of the word entirely corroborates this idea. As is well known, the words health, whole, holy, are from the same stock ; and they indicate to us the fact that far back in the past those who created this group of words had a conception of the meaning of Health very different from ours, and which they embodied unconsciously in the word itself and its strange relatives.

These are, for instance, and among others : heal, hallow, hale, holy, whole, wholesome ; German heilig, Heiland (the Saviour) ; Latin salus (as in salutation, salvation) ; Greek kalos ; also compare hail ! a salutation, and, less certainly connected, the root hal^ to breathe, as in inhale, exhale — French haleine — Italian and French alma and ^me (the soul) ; compare the Latin spirit us, spirit or breath, and Sanskrit atman, breath or soul, German athmen.

Wholeness, holiness ..." if thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light." ..." thy faith hath made thee

The idea seems to be a positive one — a condition of the body in which it is an entirety, a unity — a central force maintaining that condition ; and disease being the break-up — or break-down — of that entirety into multiplicity.

The peculiarity about our modern conception of Health is that it seems to be a purely negative one. So impressed are we by the myriad presence of Disease — so numerous its dangers, so sudden and unforetellable its attacks — that we have come to look upon health as the mere absence of the same. As a solitary spy picks his way through a hostile camp at night, sees the enemy sitting round his fires, and trembles at the crackling of a twig beneath his feet — so the traveler thro' this world, comforter in one hand and physic-bottle in the other, must pick his way, fearful lest at any time he disturb the sleeping legions of death — thrice blessed if by any means, steering now to the right and now to the left, and thinking only of his personal safety, he pass by without discovery to the other side.

Health with us is a negative thing. It is a neutralisation of opposing dangers. It is to be neither rheumatic nor gouty, consumptive nor bilious, to be untroubled by head-ache, backache, heart-ache or any of the " thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to." These are the realities. Health is the mere negation of them.

The modern notion, and which has evidently in a very subtle way penetrated the whole thought of to-day, is that the essential fact of life is the existence of innumerable external forces, which, by a very delicate balance and difficult to maintain, concur to produce Man — who in consequence may at any moment be destroyed again by the non-concurrence of those forces. The older notion apparently is that the essential fact of life is Man himself ; and that the external forces, so-called, are in some way subsidiary to this fact — that they may aid his expression or manifestation, or that they may hinder it, but that they can neither create nor annihilate the Man. Probably both ways of looking at the subject are important ; there is a man that can be destroyed, and there is a man that cannot be destroyed. The old words soul and body indicate this contrast ; but like all words they are subject to the defect that they are an attempt to draw a line where no line can ultimately be drawn ; they mark a contrast where, in fact, there is only continuity — for between the little mortal man who dwells here and now, and the divine and universal Man who also forms a part of our consciousness, is there not a perfect gradation of being, and where (if anywhere) is there a gulf fixed ? Together they form a unit, and each is necessary to the other : the first cannot do without the second, and the second cannot get along at all without the first. To use the words of Angelus Silesius (quoted by Schopenhauer), "Ich w^eiss das ohne mich Gott nicht ein Nu kann leben,"

According then to the elder conception, and perhaps according to an elder experience, man to be really healthy must be a unit, an entirety — his more external and momentary self standing in some kind of filial relation to his more universal and incorruptible part — so that not only the remotest and outermost regions of the body, and all the assimilative secretive and other processes belonging thereto, but even the thoughts and passions of the mind itself, stand in direct and clear relationship to it, the final and absolute transparency of the mortal creature. And thus this divinity in each creature, beins: that which constitutes it aud causes it to cohere together, was conceived of as that creature's saviour, healer — healer of wounds of body and wounds of heart — the Man within the man, whom it was not only possible to know, but whom to know and be united with was the alone salvation. This, I take it, was the law of health — and of holiness — -as accepted at some elder time of human history, and by us seen as thro' a glass darkly.

And the condition of disease, and of sin, under the same view, was the reverse of this. Enfeeblement, obscuration, duplicity — the central radiation blocked ; lesser and insubordinate centres establishing and asserting themselves as against .it ; division, discord, possession by devils.

Thus in the body, the establishment of an insubordinate centre — a boil, a tumor, the introduction and spread of a germ with innumerable progeny throughout the system, the enlargement out of all reason of an existing organ — means disease. In the mind, disease begins when any passion asserts itself as an independent centre of thought and action. The condition of health in the mind is loyalty to the divine Man w^ithin it.^ But if loyalty to money become an independent centre of life, or greed of knowledge, or of fame, or of drink ; jealousy, lust,

1 No words or theory even of morality can express or formulate this — no enthronement of any virtue can take its place ; for all virtue enthroned before our humanity becomes vice, and worse than vice.

the love of approbation ; or mere following after any so-called virtue for itself — ^purity, humility, consistency, or what not — these may grow to seriously endanger the other. They are, or should be, subordinates; and though over a long period their insubordination may be a necessary condition of human progress, yet during all such time they are at war with each other and with the central Will ; the man is torn and tormented, and is not happy.

And when I speak thus separately of the mind and body, it must be remembered, as already said, that there is no strict line between them j but probably every affection or passion of the mind has its correlative in the condition of the body — though this latter may or may not be easily observable. Gluttony is a fever of the digestive apparatus. What is a taint in the mind is also a taint in the body. The stomach has started the original idea of becoming itself the centre of the human system. The sexual organs may start a similar idea. Here are distinct threats, menaces made against the central authority — against the Man himself. For the man must rule or disappear ; it is impossible to imagine a man presided over by a Stomach — a walking Stomach, using hands, feet, and all other members merely to carry it from place to place, and serve its assimilative mania. We call such an one, a Hog. [And thus in the theory of Evolution we see the place of the hog, and all other animals, as fore-runners or off-shoots of special faculties in Man, and why the true man, and rightly, has authority over all animals, and can alone give them their place in creation.]

So of the Brain, or any other organ ; for the Man is no organ, resides in no organ, but is the central life ruling and radiating among all organs, and assigning them their parts to play.

Disease then, in body or mind, is from this point of view the break-up of its unity, its entirety, into multiplicity. It is

1 6 CIVILISATION— ITS CAUSE AND CUKE.

the abeyance of a central power, and the growth of insubordinate centres — ^life in each creature being conceived of as a continual exercise of energy or conquest, by which external or antagonistic forces (and organisms) are brought into subjection and compelled into the service of the creature, or are thrown off as harmful to it. Thus by way of illustration, we find that plants or animals, when in good health, have a remarkable power of throwing off the attacks of any parasites which incline to infest them ; while those that are weakly are very soon eaten up by the same. A rose-tree, fo|: instance, brought indoors, will soon fall a prey to the aphis — though when hardened out of doors the pest makes next to no impression on it. In dry seasons when the young turnip plants in the fields are weakly from want of water the entire crop is sometimes destroyed by the turnip fly, which then multiplies enormously ; but if a shower or two of rain come before much damage is done the plant will then grow vigorously, its tissues become more robust and resist the attacks of the fly, which in its turn dies. Late investigations seem to show that one of the functions of the white corpuscles in the blood is to devour disease-germs and bacteria present in the circulation — thus absorbing these organisms into subjection to the central life of the body — and that with this object they congregate in numbers toward any part of the body which is wounded or diseased. Or to take an example from society, it is clear enough that if our social life were really vivid and healthy, such parasitic products as the idle shareholder and the policeman above-mentioned would simply be impossible. The material on which they prey would not exist, and they would either perish or be transmuted into useful forms. It seems obvious in fact that life in any organism can only be maintained by some such processes as these — by which parasitic or infesting organisms are either thrown off or absorbed into subjection. To define the nature of the power which thus works towards and creates the distinctive unity of each organism may be difficult, is probably at present impossible, but that some such power exists we can hardly refuse to admit. Probably it is more a subject of the growth of our consciousness, than an object of external scientific investigation.

In this view, Death is simply the loosening and termination of the action of this power — over certain regions of the organism; a process by which, when these superficial parts become hardened and osseous, as in old age, or irreparably damaged, as in cases of accident, the inward being sloughs them off, and passes into other spheres. In the case of man there may be noble and there may be ignoble death, as there may be noble and ignoble life. Th« inward self, unable to maintain authority over the forces committed to its charge, declining from its high prerogative, swarmed over by parasites, and fallen partially into the clutch of obscene foes, may at last with shame and torment be driven forth from the temple in which it ought to have been supreme. Or, having fulfilled a holy and wholesome time, having radiated divine life and love through all the channels of body and mind, and as a perfect workman uses his tools, so having with perfect mastery and nonchalance used all the materials committed to it, it may quietly and peacefully lay these down, and unchanged (absolutely unchanged to all but- material eyes) pass on to other spheres appointed.

And now a few words on the medical aspect of the subject.

If we accept any theory (even remotely similar to that just

indicated) to the effect that Health is a positive thing, and not

a mere negation of disease, it becomes pretty clear that no

mere investigation of the latter will enable us to find out what

the former is, or bring us nearer to it. You might as well

B try to create the ebb and flow of the tides by an organised system of mops.

Turn your back upon the Sun and go forth into the wildernesses of space till you come to those limits where the rays of light, faint with distance, fall dim upon the confines of eternal darkness — and phantoms and shadows in the half-light are the product of the wavering conflict betwixt day and night — investigate these shadows, describe them, classify them, record the changes which takes place in them, erect in vast libraries these records into a monument of human industry and research ; so shall you be at the end as near to a knowledge and understanding of the sun itself — which all this time you have left behind you, and on which you have turned your back — as the investigators of disease are to a knowledge and understanding of what health is. The solar rays illumine the outer world and give to it its unity and entirety ; so in the inner world of each individual possibly is there another Sun, which illumines and gives unity to the man, and whose warmth and light would permeate his system. Wait upon the shining forth of this inward sun, give free access and welcome to its rays of love, and free passage for them into the common world around you, and it may be you will get to know more about health than all the books of medicine contain, or can tell you.

Or to take the former simile : it is the central force of the Moon which acting on the great ocean makes all its waters one, and causes them to rise and fall in timely consent. But take your moon away ; hey I now the tide is flowing too far down this estuary ! Station your thousands with mops ; but it breaks through in channel and runlet ! Block it here, but it overflows in a neighboring bay ! Appoint an army of swabs there, but to what end 1 The infinitest care along the fringe of this great sea can never do, with all imaginable dirt and confusion, what the central power does easily, and with unerring grace and providence.

And so of the great (the vast and wonderful) ocean which ebbs and flows within a man — take away the central guide — and not 20,000 doctors, each with 20,000 books to consult and 20,000 phials of different contents to administer, could meet the myriad cases of disease which would ensue, or bolster up into " wholeness " the being from whom the single radiant unity had departed.

Probably there has never been an age, nor any country (except Yankee-land ?) in which disease has been so generally prevalent as in England to-day ; and certainly there has never (with the same exception) been an age or country in which doctors have so swarmed, or in which medical science has been so powerful, in apparatus, in learning, in authority, and in actual organisation and number of adherents. How reconcile this contradiction — if indeed a contradiction it be ?

But the fact is that medical science does not contradict disease — any more than laws abolish crime. Medical science — and doubtless for very good reasons — makes a fetish of disease, and dances around it. It is (as a rule) only seen where disease is ; it writes enormous tomes on disease ; it induces disease in animals (and even men) for the purpose of studying it ; it knows, to a marvelous extent, the symptoms of disease, its nature, its causes, its goings out and its comings in ; its eyes are perpetually fixed on disease, till disease (for it) becomes the main fact of the world and the main object of its worship. Even what is so gracefully called Hygiene does not get beyond this negative attitude. And the world still waits for its Healer, who shall tell us — diseased and suflFering as we are — what health is, where it is to be found, whence it flows ; and who having touched this wonderful power within himself shall not rest till he has proclaimed and imparted it to men.

m

No, medical science does not, in the main, contradict disease. The same cause (infidelity and decay of the central life in men) which creates disease and makes men liable to it, creates students and a science of the subject. The Moon^ having gone from over the waters, the good people rush forth with their mops ; and the untimely inundations, and the mops and the mess and the pother, are all due to the same cause.

As to the lodgment of disease, it is clear that this would take place easily in a disorganised system — just as a seditious adventurer would easily effect a lauding, and would find insubordinate materials ready at hand for his use, in a land where the central government was weak. And as to the treatment of a disease so introduced there are obviously two methods : one is to reinforce the central power till it is sufficiently strong of itself to eject the insubordinate elements and restore order; the other is to attack the malady from outside and if possible destroy it — (as by doses and decoctions) — independently of the inner vitality, and leaving that as it was before. The first method would seem the best, most durable and effective ; but it is diflficult and slow. It consists in the adoption of a healthy life, bodily and mental, and will be spoken of later on. The second may be characterised as the medical method, and fs valuable, or rather I should be inclined to say, will be valuable, when it has found its place, which is to be subsidiary to the first. It is too often however regarded as superior in importance, and in this way, though easy of application, has come perhaps to be productive of more harm than good. The disease may be broken down for the time being, but the roots of it not being destroyed it soon springs up again in the same or a new form, and the patient is as badly off as ever.

The great positive force of Health, and the power which it

' It is curious that this word seems to have the same root as the word Man, the original idea apparently being Order, or Measure.

has to txfpd disease from its neighborhood is a thing realised I believe by few persons. But it Aa« been realised on earth, and will be realised again when the more squalid elements of our present-day civilisation have passed away.

III

The result then of our digression is to show that Health — in body or mind — means unity, integration as opposed to disintegration. In the animals we find this physical unity existing to a remarkable degree. An almost unerring instinct and selective power rules their actions and organisation. Thus a cat before it has fallen (say before it has become a very wheezy fireside pussy !) is in a sense perfect. The wonderful consent of its limbs as it runs or leaps, the adaptation of its muscles, the exactness and inevitableness of its instincts, physical and affectional ; its senses of sight and smell, its cleanliness, nicety as to food, motherly tact, the expression of its whole body wlien enraged, or when watching for prey — all these things are so to speak absolute and instantaneous — and fill one with admiration. The creature is " whole " or in one piece : there is no mentionable conflict or division within it.^

Similarly with the other animals, and even w^th the early man himself. And so it would appear — returning to our subject — that, if we accept the doctrine of Evolution, there is a progression of animated beings — which though not perfect possess in the main the attribute of Health — from the lowest forms up to a healthy and instinctive though certainly limited man. During all this stage the central law is in the ascendant,

^ And with regard to disease, though it is not maintained that among the animals there is anything like immunity from it — since diseases of a more or less parasitic character are common in all tribes of plants and animals — still they seem to be rarer, and the organic instinct of health greater, than la the civilised mai).

and the physical frame of each creature is the fairly clean vehicle of its expression — varying of course in complexity and degree according to the point of unfoldment which has been reached. And when thus in the long process of development the inner Man (which has lain hidden or dormant within the animal) at last appears, and the creature consequently takes on the outer frame and faculties of the human being, which are only as they are because of the inner man which they represent ; when it has passed through stage after stage of animal life, throwing out tentative types and likenesses of what is to come, and going through innumerable preliminary exercises in special forms and faculties, till at last it begins to be able to wear the full majesty of manhood itself — then it would seem that that long process of development is drawing to a close, and that the goal of creation must be within measurable distance.

But then, at that very moment, and when the goal is, so to speak, in sight, occurs this failure of " wholeness " of which we have spoken, this partial break-up of the unity of human nature — and man, instead of going forward any longer in the same line as before, to all appearance /a^/s.

What is the meaning of this loss of unity % What is the cause and purpose of this fall and centuries-long exile from the earlier Paradise %

There can be but one answer. It is self-knowledge — (which involves in a sense the abandonment of self). Man has to become conscious of his destiny — to lay hold of and realise his own freedom and blessedness — to transfer his consciousness from the outer and mortal part of him to the inner and undying.

The cat cannot do this. Though perfect in its degree, its

interior unfoldment is yet incomplete. The human soul within

not yet come forward and declared itself; some sheath-

^es have yet to open before the divine flower-bud can be clearly seen. And when at last (speaking as a fool) the cat becomes a man — when the human soul within the creature has climbed itself forward and found expression, transforming the outer frame in the process into that of humanity — (which is the meaning I suppose of the evolution theory) — then the creature, though perfect and radiant in the form of Man, still lacks one thing. It lacks the knowledge of itself ; it lacks its own identity, and the realisation of the manhood to which as a fact it has attained.

In the animals consciousness has never returned upon itself. It radiates easily outwards ; and the creature obeys without let or hesitation, and with little if any seZ/'-consciousness, the law of its being. And when man first appears on the earth, and even up to the threshold of what we call civilisation, there is much to show that he should in this respect still be classed with the animals. Though vastly superior to them in attainments, physical and mental, in power over nature, capacity of progress, and adaptability, he still in these earlier stages was like an animal in the unconscious instinctive nature of his action; and on the other hand, though his moral and intellectual structures were far less complete than those of the modern man — as was a necessary result of the absence of self-knowledge — he actually lived more in harmony with himself and with nature,^ than does his descendant; his impulses,

1 As to the unity of these wild races with Nature, that is a matter seemingly beyond dispute ; their keenness of sense, sensitive to atmospheric changes, knowledge of properties of plants and habits of animals, etc., have been the subject of frequent remark j but beyond this, their strong/ee^in^ of union with the universal spirit, probably only dimly self conscious, but expressing itself very markedly and clearly in their customs, is most strange and pregnant of meaning. The dances of the Andaman Islanders on the sands at night, the wild festival of the new moon among the Fans and other African tribes, the processions through the forests, the chants and dull thudding of drums ; the torture-dauces of both physical and social, were clearer aud more uuhesitating ; and his unconsciousness of inner discord and sin a great contrast to our modem condition of everlasting strife and perplexity.

If then to this stage belongs some degree of human perfection and felicity, yet there remains a much vaster height to be scaled. The human soul which has wandered darkling for so many thousand of years, from its tiny spark-like germ in some low form of life to its full splendor and dignity in man, has yet to come to the knowledge of its wonderful heritage, has yet to become finally individualised and free, to know itself immortal, to resume and interpret all its past lives, and to enter in triumph into the kingdom which it has won.

It has in fact to face the frightful struggle of self-consciousness, or the disentanglement of the true self from the fleeting and perishable self. The animals and man, unfallen, are healthy and free from care, but unaware of what they are ; to attain self-knowledge man must fall; he must become less than his true self ; he must endue imperfection ; division and strife must enter his nature. To realise the perfect Li.'e, to know what, how wonderful it is — to understand that all blessedness and freedom consists in its possession — he must for the moment suffer divorce from it ; the unity, the repose of his nature must be broken up, crime, disease and unrest must enter in, and by contrast he must attain to knowledge.

Curious that at the very dawn of the Greek and with it the European civilisation we have the mystic words *' Know Thy-

the young Hcd Indian bravos in the bui-nmg heat of the sun ; the

Dionysiac festivals among the early Greeks ; and indeed the sacrificial

nature-rites and carnivals and extraordinary powers of second-sight found

cj all primitive peoples ; all these things indicate clearly a faculty

though it had hardly become self-conscious enough to be what

religion, was yet in truth the foundation element of religion,

\ germ of some human powers which wait yet to be developed.

self " inscribed on the temple of the Delphic Apollo ; and that first among the legends of the Semitic race stands that of Adam and Eve eating of the tree of the Knowledge of good and evil ! To the animal there is no such knowledge, to the early man there was no such knowledge, and to the perfected man of the future there will be no such knowledge. It is a temporary perversion, indicating the disunion of the present-day man — the disunion of the outer self from the inner — the horrible dual self-consciousness — which is the means ultimately of a more perfect and conscious union than could ever have been realised without it — the death that is swallowed- up in victory. " For the first man is of the earth, earthy ; but the second man is the Lord from heaven."

In order then, at this point in his Evolution, to advance any farther, Man must first fall ; in order to know, he must lose. In order to realise what Health is, how splendid and glorious a possession, he must go through all the long negative experience of Disease ; in order to know the perfect social life, to understand what power and happiness to mankind are involved in their true relation to each other, he must learn the misery and suffering which come from mere individualism and greed \ and in order to find his true Manhood, to discover what a w^onderf ul power it is, he must first lose it — he must become a prey and a slave to his own passions and desires — whirled away like Phaethon by the horses which he cannot control.