BEYOND MAN
It seems to me a lecturer's duty to speak to you about any remarkable
thought at this moment engaging the attention of Western philosophers and
men of science,--partly because any such new ideas are certain, sooner or
later, to be reflected in literature, and partly because without a
knowledge of them you might form incorrect ideas in relation to utterances
of any important philosophic character. I am not going to discourse about
Nietzsche, though the title of this lecture is taken from one of his
books; the ideas about which I am going to tell you, you will not find in
his books. It is most extraordinary, to my thinking, that these ideas
never occurred to him, for he was an eminent man of science before writing
his probably insane books. I have not the slightest sympathy with most of
his ideas; they seem to me misinterpretations of evolutional teachings;
and if not misinterpretations, they are simply undeveloped and
ill-balanced thinking. But the title of one of his books, and the idea
which he tries always unsuccessfully to explain,--that of a state above
mankind, a moral condition "beyond man," as he calls it,--that is worth
talking about. It is not nonsense at all, but fact, and I think that I can
give you a correct idea of the realities in the case. Leaving Nietzsche
entirely alone, then, let us ask if it is possible to suppose a condition
of human existence above morality,--that is to say, more moral than the
most moral ideal which a human brain can conceive? We may answer, it is
quite possible, and it is not only possible, but it has actually been
predicted by many great thinkers, including Herbert Spencer.
We have been brought up to think that there can be nothing better than
virtue, than duty, than strictly following the precepts of a good
religion. However, our ideas of goodness and of virtue necessarily imply
the existence of the opposite qualities. To do a good thing because it is
our duty to do it, implies a certain amount of resolve, a struggle against
difficulty. The virtue of honesty is a term implying the difficulty of
being perfectly honest. When we think of any virtuous or great deed, we
can not help thinking of the pain and obstacles that have to be met with
in performing that deed. All our active morality is a struggle against
immorality. And I think that, as every religion teaches, it must be
granted that no human being has a perfectly moral nature.
Could a world exist in which the nature of all the inhabitants would be so
moral that the mere idea of what is immoral could not exist? Let me
explain my question more in detail. Imagine a society in which the idea of
dishonesty would not exist, because no person could be dishonest, a
society in which the idea of unchastity could not exist, because no person
could possibly be unchaste, a world in which no one could have any idea of
envy, ambition or anger, because such passions could not exist, a world in
which there would be no idea of duty, filial or parental, because not to
be filial, not to be loving, not to do everything which we human beings
now call duty, would be impossible. In such a world ideas of duty would be
quite useless; for every action of existence would represent the constant
and faultless performance of what we term duty. Moreover, there would be
no difficulty, no pain in such performance; it would be the constant and
unfailing pleasure of life. With us, unfortunately, what is wrong often
gives pleasure; and what is good to do, commonly causes pain. But in the
world which I am asking you to imagine there could not be any wrong, nor
any pleasure in wrong-doing; all the pleasure would be in right-doing. To
give a very simple illustration--one of the commonest and most pardonable
faults of young people is eating, drinking, or sleeping too much. But in
our imaginary world to eat or to drink or to sleep in even the least
degree more than is necessary could not be done; the constitution of the
race would not permit it. One more illustration. Our children have to be
educated carefully in regard to what is right or wrong; in the world of
which I am speaking, no time would be wasted in any such education, for
every child would be born with full knowledge of what is right and wrong.
Or to state the case in psychological language--I mean the language of
scientific, not of metaphysical, psychology--we should have a world in
which morality would have been transmuted into inherited instinct. Now
again let me put the question: can we imagine such a world? Perhaps you
will answer, Yes, in heaven--nowhere else. But I answer you that such a
world actually exists, and that it can be studied in almost any part of
the East or of Europe by a person of scientific training. The world of
insects actually furnishes examples of such a moral transformation. It is
for this reason that such writers as Sir John Lubbock and Herbert Spencer
have not hesitated to say that certain kinds of social insects have
immensely surpassed men, both in social and in ethical progress.
But that is not all that it is necessary to say here. You might think that
I am only repeating a kind of parable. The important thing is the opinion
of scientific men that humanity will at last, in the course of millions of
years, reach the ethical conditions of the ants. It is only five or six
years ago that some of these conditions were established by scientific
evidence, and I want to speak of them. They have a direct bearing upon
important ethical questions; and they have startled the whole moral world,
and set men thinking in entirely new directions.
In order to explain how the study of social insects has set moralists of
recent years thinking in a new direction, it will be necessary to
generalize a great deal in the course of so short a lecture. It is
especially the social conditions of the ants which has inspired these new
ideas; but you must not think that any one species of ants furnishes us
with all the facts. The facts have been arrived at only through the study
of hundreds of different kinds of ants by hundreds of scientific men; and
it is only by the consensus of their evidence that we get the ethical
picture which I shall try to outline for you. Altogether there are
probably about five thousand different species of ants, and these
different species represent many different stages of social evolution,
from the most primitive and savage up to the most highly civilized and
moral. The details of the following picture are furnished by a number of
the highest species only; that must not be forgotten. Also, I must remind
you that the morality of the ant, by the necessity of circumstance, does
not extend beyond the limits of its own species. Impeccably ethical within
the community, ants carry on war outside their own borders; were it not
for this, we might call them morally perfect creatures.
Although the mind of an ant can not be at all like to the mind of the
human being, it is so intelligent that we are justified in trying to
describe its existence by a kind of allegorical comparison with human
life. Imagine, then, a world full of women, working night and
day,--building, tunnelling, bridging,--also engaged in agriculture, in
horticulture, and in taking care of many kinds of domestic animals. (I may
remark that ants have domesticated no fewer than five hundred and
eighty-four different kinds of creatures.) This world of women is
scrupulously clean; busy as they are, all of them carry combs and brushes
about them, and arrange themselves several times a day. In addition to
this constant work, these women have to take care of myriads of
children,--children so delicate that the slightest change in the weather
may kill them. So the children have to be carried constantly from one
place to another in order to keep them warm.
Though this multitude of workers are always gathering food, no one of them
would eat or drink a single atom more than is necessary; and none of them
would sleep for one second longer than is necessary. Now comes a
surprising fact, about which a great deal must be said later on. These
women have no sex. They are women, for they sometimes actually give birth,
as virgins, to children; but they are incapable of wedlock. They are more
than vestals. Sex is practically suppressed.
This world of workers is protected by an army of soldiers. The soldiers
are very large, very strong, and shaped so differently from the working
females that they do not seem at first to belong to the same race. They
help in the work, though they are not able to help in some delicate kinds
of work--they are too clumsy and strong. Now comes the second astonishing
fact: these soldiers are all women--amazons, we might call them; but they
are sexless women. In these also sex has been suppressed.
You ask, where do the children come from? Most of the children are born of
special mothers--females chosen for the purpose of bearing offspring, and
not allowed to do anything else. They are treated almost like empresses,
being constantly fed and attended and served, and being lodged in the best
way possible. Only these can eat and drink at all times--they must do so
for the sake of their offspring. They are not suffered to go out, unless
strongly attended, and they are not allowed to run any risk of danger or
of injury The life of the whole race circles about them and about their
children, but they are very few.
Last of all are the males, the men. One naturally asks why females should
have been specialized into soldiers instead of men. It appears that the
females have more reserve force, and all the force that might have been
utilized in the giving of life has been diverted to the making of
aggressive powers. The real males are very small and weak. They appear to
be treated with indifference and contempt. They are suffered to become the
bridegrooms of one night, after which they die very quickly. By contrast,
the lives of the rest are very long. Ants live for at least three or four
years, but the males live only long enough to perform their solitary
function.
In the foregoing little fantasy, the one thing that should have most
impressed you is the fact of the suppression of sex. But now comes the
last and most astonishing fact of all: this suppression of sex is not
natural, but artificial--I mean that it is voluntary. It has been
discovered that ants are able, by a systematic method of nourishment, to
suppress or develop sex as they please. The race has decided that sex
shall not be allowed to exist except in just so far as it is absolutely
necessary to the existence of the race. Individuals with sex are tolerated
only as necessary evils. Here is an instance of the most powerful of all
passions voluntarily suppressed for the benefit of the community at large.
It vanishes whenever unnecessary; when necessary after a war or a calamity
of some kind, it is called into existence again. Certainly it is not
wonderful that such a fact should have set moralists thinking. Of course
if a human community could discover some secret way of effecting the same
object, and could have the courage to do it, or rather the unselfishness
to do it, the result would simply be that sexual immorality of any kind
would become practically impossible The very idea of such immorality would
cease to exist.
But that is only one fact of self-suppression and the ant-world furnishes
hundreds. To state the whole thing in the simplest possible way, let me
say the race has entirely got rid of everything that we call a selfish
impulse. Even hunger and thirst allow of no selfish gratification. The
entire life of the community is devoted to the common good and to mutual
help and to the care of the young. Spencer says it is impossible to
imagine that an ant has a sense of duty like our own,--a religion, if you
like. But it does not need a sense of duty, it does not need religion. Its
life is religion in the practical sense. Probably millions of years ago
the ant had feelings much more like our own than it has now. At that time,
to perform altruistic actions may have been painful to the ant; to perform
them now has become the one pleasure of its existence. In order to bring
up children and serve the state more efficiently these insects have
sacrificed their sex and every appetite that we call by the name of animal
passion. Moreover they have a perfect community, a society in which nobody
could think of property, except as a state affair, a public thing, or as
the Romans would say a _res publica_. In a human community so organized,
there could not be ambition, any jealousy, any selfish conduct of any
sort--indeed, no selfishness at all. The individual is said to be
practically sacrificed for the sake of the race; but such a supposition
means the highest moral altruism. Therefore thinkers have to ask, "Will
man ever rise to something like the condition of ants?"
Herbert Spencer says that such is the evident tendency. He does not say,
nor is it at all probable, that there will be in future humanity such
physiological specialization as would correspond to the suppression of sex
among ants, or to the bringing of women to the dominant place in the human
world, and the masculine sex to an inferior position. That is not likely
ever to happen, for reasons which it would take very much too long to
speak of now. But there is evidence that the most selfish of all human
passions will eventually be brought under control--under such control that
the present cause of wellnigh all human suffering, the pressure of
population, will be practically removed. And there is psychological
evidence that the human mind will undergo such changes that wrong-doing,
in the sense of unkindly action, will become almost impossible, and that
the highest pleasure will be found not in selfishness but in
unselfishness. Of course there are thousands of things to think about,
suggested by this discovery of the life of ants. I am only telling the
more important ones. What I have told you ought at least to suggest that
the idea of a moral condition much higher than all our moral conditions of
today is quite possible,--that it is not an idea to be laughed at. But it
was not Nietzsche who ever conceived this possibility. His "Beyond Man"
and the real and much to be hoped for "beyond man," are absolutely
antagonistic conceptions. When the ancient Hebrew writer said, thousands
of years ago, "Go to the ant, thou sluggard, consider her ways," he could
not have imagined how good his advice would prove in the light of
twentieth century science.