In human affairs everything happens by chance—that is, in defiance of
human ideas, and without any direction of an intelligence. A man bathes
in a pool, a crocodile seizes and lacerates his flesh. If any one
maintains that an intelligence directed that cruelty, I can only reply
that his mind is under an illusion. A man is caught by a revolving
shaft and torn to pieces, limb from limb. There is no directing
intelligence in human affairs, no protection, and no assistance. Those
who act uprightly are not rewarded, but they and their children often
wander in the utmost indigence. Those who do evil are not always
punished, but frequently flourish and have happy children. Rewards and
punishments are purely human institutions, and if government be relaxed
they entirely disappear. No intelligence whatever interferes in human
affairs. There is a most senseless belief now prevalent that effort,
and work, and cleverness, perseverance and industry, are invariably
successful. Were this the case, every man would enjoy a competence, at
least, and be free from the cares of money. This is an illusion almost
equal to the superstition of a directing intelligence, which every fact
and every consideration disproves.
How can I adequately express my contempt for the assertion that all
things occur for the best, for a wise and beneficent end, and are
ordered by a humane intelligence! It is the most utter falsehood and a
crime against the human race. Even in my brief time I have been
contemporary with events of the most horrible character; as when the
mothers in the Balkans cast their own children from the train to parish
in the snow; as when the _Princess Alice_ foundered, and six hundred
human beings were smothered in foul water; as when the hecatomb of two
thousand maidens were burned in the church at Santiago; as when the
miserable creatures tore at the walls of the Vienna theatre. Consider
only the fates which overtake the little children. Human suffering is
so great, so endless, so awful that I can hardly write of it. I could
not go into hospitals and face it, as some do, lest my mind should be
temporarily overcome. The whole and the worst the worst pessimist can
say is far beneath the least particle of the truth, so immense is the
misery of man. It is the duty of all rational beings to acknowledge the
truth. There is not the least trace of directing intelligence in human
affairs. This is a foundation of hope, because, if the present
condition of things were ordered by a superior power, there would be no
possibility of improving it for the better in the spite of that power.
Acknowledging that no such direction exists, all things become at once
plastic to our will.
The credit given by the unthinking to the statement that all affairs
are directed has been the bane of the world since the days of the
Egyptian papyri and the origin of superstition. So long as men firmly
believe that everything is fixed for them, so long is progress
impossible. If you argue yourself into the belief that you cannot walk
to a place, you cannot walk there. But if you start you can walk there
easily. Any one who will consider the affairs of the world at large,
and of the individual, will see that they do not proceed in the manner
they would do for our own happiness if a man of humane breadth of view
were placed at their head with unlimited power, such as is credited to
the intelligence which does not exist. A man of intellect and humanity
could cause everything to happen in an infinitely superior manner.
Could one like the divine Julius—humane, generous, broadest of view,
deep thinking—wield such power, certainly every human being would enjoy
happiness.
But that which is thoughtlessly credited to a non-existent intelligence
should really be claimed and exercised by the human race. It is
ourselves who should direct our affairs, protecting ourselves from
pain, assisting ourselves, succouring and rendering our lives happy. We
must do for ourselves what superstition has hitherto supposed an
intelligence to do for us. Nothing whatsoever is done for us. We are
born naked, and not even protected by a shaggy covering. Nothing is
done for us. The first and strongest command (using the word to convey
the idea only) that nature, the universe, our own bodies give, is to do
everything for ourselves. The sea does not make boats for us, nor the
earth of her own will build us hospitals. The injured lie bleeding, and
no invisible power lifts them up. The maidens were scorched in the
midst of their devotions, and their remains make a mound hundreds of
yards long. The infants perished in the snow, and the ravens tore their
limbs. Those in the theatre crushed each other to the death—agony. For
how long, for how many thousand years, must the earth and the sea, and
the fire and the air, utter these things and force them upon us before
they are admitted in their full significance?
These things speak with a voice of thunder. From every human being
whose body has been racked by pain; from every human being who has
suffered from accident or disease; from every human being drowned,
burned, or slain by negligence, there goes up a continually increasing
cry louder than the thunder. An awe-inspiring cry dread to listen to,
which no one dares listen to, against which ears are stopped by the wax
of superstition and the wax of criminal selfishness:—These miseries are
your doing, because you have mind and though, and could have prevented
them. You can prevent them in the future. You do not even try.
It is perfectly certain that all diseases without exception are
preventable, or, if not so, that they can be so weakened as to do no
harm. It is perfectly certain that all accidents are preventable; there
is not one that does not arise from folly or negligence. All accidents
are crimes. It is perfectly certain that all human beings are capable
of physical happiness. It is absolutely incontrovertible that the ideal
shape of the human being is attainable to the exclusion of deformities.
It is incontrovertible that there is no necessity for any man to die
but of old age, and that if death cannot be prevented life can be
prolonged far beyond the farthest now known. It is incontrovertible
that at the present time no one ever dies of old age. Not one single
person ever dies of old age, or of natural causes, for there is no such
thing as a natural cause of death. They die of disease or weakness
which is the result of disease either in themselves or in their
ancestors. No such thing as old age is known to us. We do not even know
what old age would be like, because no one ever lives to it.
Our bodies are full of unsuspected flaws, handed down it may be for
thousands of years, and it is of these that we die, and not of natural
decay. Till these are eliminated, or as nearly eliminated as possible,
we shall never even know what true old age is like, nor what the true
natural limit of human life is. The utmost limit now appears to be
about one hundred and five years, but as each person who has got so far
has died of weaknesses inherited through thousands of years, it is
impossible to say to what number of years he would have reached in a
natural state. It seems more than possible that true old age—the slow
and natural decay of the body apart from inherited flaw—would be free
from very many, if not all, of the petty miseries which now render
extreme age a doubtful blessing. If the limbs grew weaker they would
not totter; if the teeth dropped it would not be till the last; if the
eyes were less strong they would not be quite dim; nor would the mind
lose its memory.
But now we see eyes become dim and artifical aid needed in comparative
youth, and teeth drop out in mere childhood. Many men and women lose
teeth before they are twenty. This simple fact is evidence enough of
inherited weakness or flaw. How could a person who had lost teeth
before twenty be ever said to die of old age, though he died at a
hundred and ten? Death is not a supernatural event; it is an event of
the most materialistic character, and may certainly be postponed, by
the united efforts of the human race, to a period far more distant from
the date of birth than has been the case during the historic period.
The question has often been debated in my mind whether death is or is
not wholly preventable; whether, if the entire human race were united
in their efforts to eliminate causes of decay, death might not also be
altogether eliminated.
If we consider ourselves by the analogy of animals, trees, and other
living creatures, the reply is that, however postponed, in long process
of time the tissues must wither. Suppose an ideal man, free from
inherited flaw, then though his age might be prolonged to several
centuries, in the end the natural body must wear out. That is true so
far. But it so happens that the analogy is not just, and therefore the
conclusions it points to are not tenable.
Man is altogether different from every other animal, every other living
creature known. He is different in body. In his purely natural state—in
his true natural state—he is immeasurably stronger. No animal
approaches to the physical perfection of which a man is capable. He can
weary the strongest horse, he can outrun the swiftest stag, he can bear
extremes of heat and cold hunger and thirst, which would exterminate
every known living thing. Merely in bodily strength he is superior to
all. The stories of antiquity, which were deemed fables, may be fables
historically, but search has shown that they are not intrinsically
fables. Man of flesh and blood is capable of all that Ajax, all that
Hercules did. Feats in modern days have surpassed these, as when Webb
swam the Channel; mythology contains nothing equal to that. The
difference does not end here. Animals think to a certain extent, but if
their conceptions be ever so clever, not having hands they cannot
execute them.
I myself maintain that the mind of man is practically infinite. It can
understand anything brought before it. It has not the power of its own
motion to bring everything before it, but when anything is brought it
is understood. It is like sitting in a room with one window; you cannot
compel everything to pass the window, but whatever does pass is seen.
It is like a magnifying glass, which magnifies and explains everything
brought into its focus. The mind of man is infinite. Beyond this, man
has a soul. I do not use this word in the common sense which
circumstances have given to it. I use it as the only term to express
that inner consciousness which aspires. These brief reasons show that
the analogy is imperfect, and that therefore, although an ideal
animal—a horse, a dog, a lion—must die, it does not follow that an
ideal man must. He has a body possessed of exceptional recuperative
powers, which, under proper conditions, continually repairs itself. He
has a mind by which he can select remedies, and select his course and
carefully restore the waste of tissue. He has a soul, as yet, it seems
to me, lying in abeyance, by the aid of which he may yet discover
things now deemed supernatural.
Considering these things I am obliged by facts and incontrovertible
argument to conclude that death is not inevitable to the ideal man. He
is shaped for a species of physical immortality. The beauty of form of
the ideal human being indicates immortality—the contour, the curve, the
outline answer to the idea of life. In the course of ages united effort
long continued may eliminate those causes of decay which have grown up
in ages past, and after that has been done advance farther and improve
the natural state. As a river brings down suspended particles of sand,
and depositing them at its mouth forms a delta and a new country; as
the air and the rain and the heat of the sun desiccate the rocks and
slowly wear down mountains into sand, so the united action of the human
race, continued through centuries, may build up the ideal man and
woman. Each individual labouring in his day through geological time in
front must produce an effect. The instance of Sparta, where so much was
done in a few centuries, is almost proof of it.
The truth is, we die through our ancestors; we are murdered by our
ancestors. Their dead hands stretch forth from the tomb and drag us
down to their mouldering bones. We in our turn are now at this moment
preparing death for our unborn posterity. This day those that die do
not die in the sense of old age, they are slain. Nothing has been
accumulated for our benefit in ages past. All the labour and the toil
of so many millions continued through such vistas of time, down to
those millions who at this hour are rushing to and fro in London, has
accumulated nothing for us. Nothing for our good. The only things that
have been stored up have been for our evil and destruction, diseases
and weaknesses crossed and cultivated and rendered almost part and
parcel of our very bones. Now let us begin to roll back the tide of
death, and to set our faces steadily to a future of life. It should be
the sacred and sworn duty of every one, once at least during lifetime,
to do something in person towards this end. It would be a delight and
pleasure to me to do something every day, were it ever so minute. To
reflect that another human being, if at a distance of ten thousand
years from the year 1883, would enjoy one hour’s more life, in the
sense of fulness of life, in consequence of anything I had done in my
little span, would be to me a peace of soul.