The religion of nature

Front matter

THE

RELIGION

OF

Preface

In this little book my object is not to preach, but to prove on logical and scientific grounds, and in language which all can understand, that man has inherited the spirit of God and will return to God.

In my earliest childhood I was entrusted, during the absence of my parents in India, to the care of a Scotch clergyman of the severest school. His sermons and his moral exhortations were, so far as my memory serves, all of the gloomiest and most terrifying kind. The end of the world and the commencement of unending torment were always in my mind — at the age of five — as probable occurrences of every day.

My very earliest recollection of nature and wild life is bound up with this haunting dread. I was in the garden one day when a wild duck flew by. I had never seen one before; and, with its neck stretched out in front and no tail to speak of behind, I mistook one end of the bird for the other, and thought it was flying tail-first.

I vividly experience even now the hot-cold rush [vii]

PREFACE

of thought Into my amazed mind : " A bird flying backwards! The impossible coming to pass! The end of the world ! '' I rushed indoors and upstairs, and hid under my cot in terror. Such is the state of nerves to which too much religion of the frightening kind can reduce a child of five.

Removed to home surroundings by the return of my mother from India, the end of the world and my own certain damnation were still my terrors in the night; and by day I must have been rather a terror to my seniors with my constant efforts to get some light on the subject. They could not solve my diflSculties ; so they put me off by saying that we must believe without questioning.

When I grew older, the problem — of course, an old one — presented itself: Why is it wicked to ask questions? We have been given reasoning power by God: and one could understand that it might be wicked to refuse to use God's gift. But how can it be wicked to use this in relation to the most important fact of existence, namely, the future of one's soul.^^

So I tried to reason the thing out: but the more I tried the more wrong and cruel everything seemed to be.

But that was only because the reasoning did not go quite far enough. By slow degrees I

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PREFACE

worked out the problem; and now I find myself possessed of a faith the chief beauty and value of which — to my mind — lies in the fact that it brings religion and science into harmony.

It is no longer " wicked " to ask questions and to seek the truth. The more you ask the more truth you find.

There is a pleasure in the pathless woods, There is a rapture on the lonely shore. There is society where none intrudes By the deep sea, and music in its roar; I love not man the less, hut Nature more From these our interviews, in which I steal From all I may be or have been before. To mingle with the universe and feel What I can ne'er express, yet cannot all conceal.

Byron.

[ix]

T

Contents

CHAPTER PAGE

I. Mak and Other Animals 3

"A Freethinker's" Challenge— Cruelty of Nature — The Human Point of View — Man's Unconsciousness in Peril — Hypnotic Unconsciousness — Parallel of the Telegraph Office — Flagellants and Devotees — Meaning of " Sensation " — Why Animals are Spared Pain — Man as a Hunting Animal — Man as a Person.

Chapter I

" A Freethinker's " Challenge— Cruelty of Nature— The Human Point of View — Man's Unconsciousness in Peril — Hypnotic Unconsciousness — Parallel of the Telegraph Office — Flagellants and Devotees — Meaning of " Sensation " — Why Animals are Spared Pain — Man as a Hunting Animal — Man as a Person.

IN the following pages I hope to bring home to all readers the truth of the views which have brought comfort and complete satisfaction to myself.

For more than a score of years the problem of the apparent cruelty of the world was daily in my mind. Nature in almost all its details seemed to undermine the very basis of religion ; but gradually I came to see the very truth, and now I find nature to be the bed-rock of true religion, insomuch that the future of the human soul itself — as taught by religion — is only the crown of natural evolution.

I should probably not, however, have ventured to put my views in detail into print, but for an accident.

A little while ago " A Freethinker " whose name, if pubhshed, would surprise most of my readers — was good enough to write to me that he had been struck by the " confident religious note " which seemed to inspire some of my writings, and he wanted to know how I could reconcile the study of nature with belief in religion.

As a very able controversiahst he allowed me, in reply, to sum up his closely-typewritten pages in the sentence that nature as we see it — from the human point of view — appears intensely cruel and, therefore, incompatible with the theory of the existence of a merciful God.

This has, indeed, been a great stumbling-block to many good men.

But, the apparent cruelty of nature having been granted — for, indeed, the seeming atrocities which are commonplaces in nature are often almost too horrid to be described in print — I was able to point out that the whole significance of the facts lies in the words " from the human point of view " — for, of course, we cannot look at nature from any point of view but our own.

Now, the human point of view is that of a conscious personality, a being who feels that he has an individual existence apart from his body, and who has the power of contemplating and considering the injuries which his body may suffer, translating them into terms of conscious pain. This translation is almost instantaneous, so that we do not as a rule recognize any connecting link between the two things. When a wasp stings your hand, you start and you probably cry out, at the same time feeling pain.

Indeed, looking back upon this incident, you ordinarily suppose that the reason why you started and cried out was that you consciously felt the pain; and this mistake — for it is a mistake — leads you into the further error of supposing that a dog who similarly jumped and yelped in the same circumstances consciously felt the pain in exactly the same way.

Indeed, it is very hard to realize the distinction between mental consciousness and bodily sensation, or the great difference which may separate other animals' " feelings " from ours. We have never been in the habit of supposing that there was any distinction or difference, because all our ideas about pain and suffering and the words in which we express them are based on the notion that the feeling of pain is necessarily conscious and inseparable from the suffering of injury. We get just a glimpse of the separation between them, however, in cases of urgent peril or desperate struggle.

Everyone who has been in sudden deadly peril [5]

or has fought hard for his hfe is surprised afterwards to recollect that he was conscious of no fear and felt no pain from wounds at the time. This is owing to the fact that in the terrible shock of mortal combat the conscious personality who rules every man's thoughts and actions — except such thoughts and actions as are automatic, like those of other animals — is temporarily unseated from his throne, and for the moment man is an animal fighting instinctively for self-preservation.

At such times, even a civilized man will fix his teeth like lightning in the exposed throat of his adversary and unconsciously worry it like a wolf, unheeding meanwhile the wounds which are being inflicted upon himself.

When the struggle is over, his instinctive actions may still be the same as those of any other animal in like case ; but the conscious human being reasserts his sovereignty in the feeling of sick horror at the fearful experience gone through and glad gratefulness that the peril has been passed.

Other animals, I hold, are spared the horror and denied the gladness; they are consciously neither happier nor unhappier for the experience, and the character of their subsequent actions is modified in no way by those strong waves of

" feeling " which agitate the man when he thinks of the incident.

In this connection I would quote some lines by Kipling, which throw the flashlight of genius on the subject. He is describing one of those sudden panics to which even British troops are liable, and he makes one of the fugitive soldiers say:

*' Till I 'eard a beggar squealin' out for quarter as he ran: An' I thought I knew the voice — an' it was me ! "

No one can fail to be struck by the absolute, inexorable truth of the picture of the soldier automatically fleeing for his life and automatically calling out for mercy as he did so, just as a frightened dog would run and yelp ; while the conscious human being in the soldier's body was in complete ignorance, as it were, of his proceedings — until he recognized his own voice!

Now, this admirably illustrates the point which I wish to make clear ; namely, that our own behavior in moments of terrible crisis enables us to catch just a glimpse of the distinction between the conscious human being and his animal self. It is only at such times that the shock, as it were, throws human consciousness out of gear, and for a moment we see man acting by instinct only like any other animal.

If Kipling's soldier had been shot through the heart a moment before the conscious power of thought returned he would have died as any other animal dies, without knowledge of the anguish of fear through which he had passed.

We get another ghmpse of the line of demarcation between the body's sensation of pain and the mental consciousness of that sensation, even in the human mind, in the case of persons who have been hypnotized.

Not long ago a case was reported at considerable length in the London papers in which a woman, whose state of health forbade the use of ordinary anaesthetics, was subjected to hypnotism before undergoing a surgical operation. Now, the result of hypnotism is to separate the mind from the body — to transfer the conscious personality from its actual circumstances into whatever environment the hypnotist chooses to suggest. In this case the effect was remarkable.

The hypnotist suggested to the mind of the woman that nothing worthy of attention was about to happen, and throughout the operation she kept up a conversation with him about trivial matters. At the same time her hand, which he was holding, gripped his convulsively at each of the moments when, had she not been hypnotized, she would have been acutely conscious of pain.

Although the full details of this case, with names, dates, etc., were published in the papers at the time, it is immaterial to my case that it should be true and authentic. It merely illustrates the well-known fact that the minds of mesmerized or hypnotized persons may be unconscious of injuries which their bodies suffer, and on the other hand may feel imaginary pains which have not in reality been inflicted.

Now, I do not say that there is any exact analogy between one of the lower animals and a hypnotized human being, because the latter lives for the time being in unreal circumstances ; but such facts as that a woman could talk light-heartedly about her favorite novels and so on, at the moments when her tortured body was telegraphing for aid to her brain and her brain was forwarding the message on to the muscles which moved her hand, shows that, even in human beings the feeling of pain and the consciousness of feeling pain can be separated. And if they are not inseparable, we cannot take any actions, which merely show that the bodies of animals feel pain, as proof that they are conscious of feeling it, since — as I will show later — many other actions and emotions of animals which appear " conscious " to us, must be quite unconscious.

Further, as we have no right to suppose that one action or emotion of an animal is more conscious than another, I am glad to beheve that those who fear that animals other than man share man's consciousness of suffering must be mistaken.

It is difficult to realize the all-important difference in happiness or unhappiness which this conscious power of realizing one's sensations makes between man and other animals ; because, although the mind of man is to some extent independent of his body, it is still to a greater extent dependent upon it. Human consciousness is in fact the quintessence of man's mental power, but it is situated within the great nerve center of his brain, and is still informed, and dominated to a great extent, by his nerves.

Perhaps the best and most natural explanation of the matter is to be found by comparing the nervous system of the higher animals with a complete telegraph service, the brain being the receiving center of all messages from the nerves and the distributing center whence all messages are sent out to the muscles. By this machinery the actions of an animal automatically correspond to its sensations ; and in the long process of evolution every species of animal has acquired a set of rules for doing instantly that which the experience of past ages has shown to be the right thing to do in any given circumstances.

Thus, the mind of an animal may be likened to an ordinary telegraph-ofBce under an ordinary telegraph-master, whose conduct is regulated by routine and rule, every message received being dealt with promptly in the ordinary course of business.

The human mind, on the other hand, resembles a more important telegraph office of which a superior, responsible official has supreme charge. There is still the ordinary telegraph-master attending to the routine work, so that to outward seeming the receipt and dispatch of messages scarcely differs from the ordinary system ; but the responsible official all the while exercises the power of deciding that a certain class of message shall be treated in a certain way, that one shall be given preference and another put in the background.

In the former class of office everything goes on smoothly and automatically, according to rule, and no responsibility troubles anyone. In the latter the responsible officials reaps all the credit or the blame of success or failure. His is the burden of responsibility and his the ambition of improvement. He personally feels the consequences of everything which happens.

The parallel is not, of course, exact, because you cannot imagine an office conducted by human beings so automatically as to eliminate the element of personal failure or success ; but it is close enough to illustrate the difference in the working between an animal mind which is actuated solely by a code of instincts, some simple and some complicated, and a human mind of which a self-conscious personality sits in charge, controlling the routine of his instincts — and feeUng the consequences.

It is almost entirely owing to the difficulty of putting new thoughts into old words that I cannot make plain in fewer sentences this difference between the unconscious suffering of animals and the unhappiness of man. To feel pain is a bodily sensation: to dislike the feeling of pain is a conscious thought ; and this " consciousness " which distinguishes in the human mind between pleasure and pain, as things desirable or otherwise, is only another phase, in fact as in word, of the " conscience " which distinguishes between good and evil.

And it may be similarly perverted. Most of us are apt to think that the conscious feeling of pain by a human being and the disHke of it cannot be separated; but there is abundance of evidence to show that they can be, and very often are, entirely separated.

It is well known to medical science that the human conscience governs one's notions of pain,

I and that immorality is often accompanied by delight in suffering great pain.

The sect of the Flagellants, originally a religious brotherhood, had to be sternly suppressed because of the frenzied excesses of self-torture in which its votaries delighted in public.

In the East to-day you may see self -tortured devotees, who cannot help feeling the pain which they inflict upon themselves, but certainly do not dislike it.

Now, if the human conscience thus working a little aside from the beaten path of thought — for in other respects these pain-lovers may be perfectly sane and sensible — can convert feelings of agonizing pain into feelings of ecstatic pleasure, is it not manifest that our conscious feelings of happiness and unhappiness are controlled by and belong to our conscience, and that other animals, who have no conscience to distinguish between right and wrong, must have no consciousness to distinguish between happiness and unhappiness?

This is hard to be understood because our language has no word to express sensibility without consciousness. We know that sensitive plants have no consciousness ; but as soon as we begin to think of sensitive animals the idea of conscious suffering comes at once into our minds, and we cannot drive it out. That is the difficulty.

For instance, one controversialist — who may be taken as a type of many — has written to me that I shall never be able to persuade him that animals do not feel pain, although in another part of his letter he agrees that they " may not be consciously happy or unhappy." That is to say, he admits my argument, but he cannot see that, if admitted, it destroys his preconceived notion of the " feeling " of " pain." That is not his fault. We all think in words ; and there are no ready-made words in which we can think of animals feeling pain without being conscious of it.

We can think of plants being " sensitive " or even of low animals " suffering injury" without conscious feeling; but as soon as we think of the higher animals, creatures of flesh and blood, the words " sensitive " and " suffering " carry a totally different meaning.

This is very illogical, because the lower animals graduate so finely upwards that there is no point in the scale at which you can say, " Here consciousness beings." It is only when you come to man himself that reasons leap to the mind at once to prove that by man the realm of consciousness is entered for the first time.

"Why should we assume that other animals are spared the consciousness of pain which is such a condition in man's life? " is a question which I

MAN AND OTHER ANIMAI.S

have been asked in various terms. The answer is, I think, plain.

Many animals are born to suffer what would be excruciating pain to human beings, through all their lives, simply because they are animals of a certain species. Take, for instance, the common dor beetle.

This is a mail-clad insect so strongly armored that it cannot by any means touch the joints of its body or the upper joints of its strong limbs. Consequently we find that parasitic mites — bearing about the same relation in size to the beetle as rats would bear to a man — cluster and multiply at these joints, sucking the living juices of the beetle's tissues.

The beetle can do nothing at all to help itself, simply because it is born to be a certain kind of beetle. Its troubles are part of its existence. It is the natural vehicle and provender of a certain kind of mite.

We cannot, therefore, suppose otherwise than that the dor beetle comes into the world with feelings adapted to the circumstances awaiting it. Although laden with a gang of blood-sucking parasites, it will go through life, feeding, multiplying, and providing for its young with complete apathy.

In the same way man, as an animal — i.e.., in a [15]

state of savage nature — comes into the world with feelings adapted to the circumstances awaiting him. Who is there that, in hunting, counts hardships and perils as matters of complaint? Instead, these seem in a curious sort of way to be part of the pleasures of the chase. That is because man is a hunting animal, and hardships and peril in hunting are his natural circumstances.

Otherwise it would be absurd that men whose means would purchase every luxury of life should gladly risk their lives, and toil more than any laborer would toil for pay, merely to kill other creatures.

Even to see the joy of middle-aged gentlemen of wealth in the midst of personal discomfort when shooting partridges is a large lesson in the meaning of " pain " to animals and men. While they are after living quarry men are pure animals, and do not mind such bodily pain and hardship as naturally belong to the pursuit.

Suppose that in his hunting man has had the misfortune to be worsted — that, instead of bringing home the lion's skin, he has lain helpless in the grip of the lion. What happens then.?

Intolerable agony, you suppose, as the lion's huge teeth crunch through bone and sinew, nerve and flesh. Yet all those, Livingstone and others, who have survived the ordeal, tell us that there is no pain: only a fierce feeling of anger against the brute. This is because, in fighting lions, man, as a hunting animal, is in his ancestral place, and is temporarily dominated by instinct only.

Man amid the surroundings of civilization is a different creature. He is no longer one of a species, born to fight through life and to die fighting. He is an individual, with a high sense of his personal destiny and of the value of comfort and health. He has, as an individual, the opportunity to avoid that which is dangerous and painful, and to choose that which is safe and pleasant. He has to choose also between right and wrong at every turn. He hates trouble and loathes pain. In his heart he detests wrong and wickedness. He is, in a word, self-conscious.

This is the reason why we may assume that other animals are spared the consciousness of pain which is such a condition of our life; because the extent of human self-consciousness is so manifestly the measure by which we can gauge the distance that civilized man has risen above the animal level.

Another great truth to remember is that, as a hunting animal, man was the enemy of almost everything that breathed: as a conscious person he becomes more and more the friend of every living thing. This is the working of God in him.

II

"Animals are not guided in inferences by reasoning; neither are children; neither are the generality of mankind in their ordinary actions and conclusions. . . . Nature must have provided some other principle of more ready and more general use and application" — David Hume.

Chapter II

Automatic Actions — Blinking in Self-Defense — Acting " without Thinking " — The Instantaneity of Instinct — A Horse's Quick Hearing — Relics of Old Habit — Where Instinct Passes Reason — Where Instinct Fails.

IT IS only because we are so familiar with actions like taking food or going to sleep, or coughing to clear our throats, etc., that we do not regard their operation as evidence of conscious intelligence; but perhaps I may be able to illustrate the exact parallelism — with a difference — between such actions, which are performed by instinct, and those which are dictated by our consciousness, if I instance the conduct of a human being when threatened by an enemy.

Suppose that a man approaches you with a manifestly hostile intent. You read his purpose in his mien, and when he aims a blow at you you avoid it by dodging. If you know little or nothing of the art of self-defense you probably spring backwards several feet or " duck.'' If you happen to be an expert boxer you may evade the [21]

blow by the movement of your head a few inches to one side; or, if you prefer it, you avert the blow with a dexterous guard of one hand, at the same time returning it with the other. That is the triumph of consciousness, armed by training.

But all such conscious acts of self-defense require an instant of time for their completion ; and the best pugilist is he who, by persistent training, has almost learned to translate the conscious processes of his mind into flashes of instinct. What this means may be understood from our instinctive habit of defending our eyes from injury. When a man aims a blow at your head you may dodge or duck or ward the blow. This will be a conscious action. But, if anything seems hkely to strike your eye, you blink; and to blink is instinctive and instantaneous.

It is a common game among boys to test each others' nerve by defying a companion to refrain from blinking when a pretended blow is aimed at the eye.

In such a case you know perfectly well that you will not be hit. Your reason is commanding your nerves to take no notice of the pretended blow. Yet, when the fist comes suddenly toward your eye — you blink.

To shut the eyelid over the eye is an admirable [ 22]

protection against injury. It is so admirable that it has become instinctive and instantaneous. Your human reason cannot control it. Yet if you had been asked whether it was possible for you to take action to protect a particular part of your body against a blow which threatened it without bringing your conscious reason into play, you would surely have said No.

Besides this instinctive habit of blinking in self-defense, everyone must have had experience of other occasions when he acted by unconscious instinct in a way which, had time allowed, his conscious reason would not have sanctioned. How often one does a thing " without thinking '^ and " on the spur of the moment " and is sorry for it afterwards ! This is human reason coming too late into action. Other animals always act without thinking, and on the spur of the moment : but they are not sorry for it afterwards. They are spared the conscious unhappiness which follows wrong actions.

You see a good instance of the instantaneity which especially distinguishes instinctive from conscious actions in the ordinary conduct of all other animals. When you are trying, with a camera which has a visible shutter, to photograph a small bird at close quarters you can hardly set the shutter to a speed great enough to prevent the bird hearing and seeing It In time to move Its wings and so spoil the plate.

If you are sitting quietly by the fire when a mouse creeps out on the hearth and some sudden noise frightens It, you will, if you analyze your sensations at the moment, find that the flight of the mouse and your conscious hearing of the noise were simultaneous. In fact, you would be Inclined to say rather that you saw the mouse bolt before you heard the noise.

In the same way If when you are feeding tame pigeons a gun Is fired off somewhere near, you are almost certain that the birds crouched In readiness to fly before you heard the sound.

In the case of a horse, too, you will frequently notice that Its ears are laid back before you are conscious of the sound which frightened it, and your hand Instinctively tightens on the reins before your reason has told you whether there is danger or not. After this, it is a contest between your human reason and the horse's unthinking instinct to flee.

Many times In India, where It was my custom to drive back to office after breakfast at exactly twelve o'clock, I had noticed that the mid-day gun which was fired near the office compound seemed to make my horse start before I heard it. So I used to try the experiment of driving up exactly to time and when the finger of my watch was on the very second of noon I would watch the horse's ears and hsten at the same time ; and there seemed to me no doubt whatever that the horse took alarm before I knew that I had heard the sound.

What was even more interesting was my discovery — as it seemed — that I myself started slightly, before I knew that I had heard the sound — at the same time, in fact, that the horse laid back its ears. If this was so — for it was very difficult to make quite sure of the succession of events which collectively occupied only an instant of time — the unconscious start would be a relic of the old instinctive habit of men, as animals, to take instantaneous, unthinking action when danger threatened.