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[Illustration: Cranial Dome of _Pithecanthropus erectus_ from river
gravel in Java.
Skull of a Greek from an ancient Cemetery.]
THE KINGDOM OF MAN
by
E. RAY LANKESTER
M.A. D.Sc. LL.D. F.R.S.
Honorary Fellow of Exeter College, Oxford; Correspondent
of the Institute of France; Emeritus Professor
of University College, London; President
of the British Association for the
Advancement of Science
Director of the Natural History Departments of the
British Museum
London
Archibald Constable & Co Ltd
10 Orange Street, Leicester Square
1907
* * * * * *
EXTINCT ANIMALS
BY
Prof. E. RAY LANKESTER, F.R.S.
With a Portrait of the Author, and 218 other Illustrations
_Demy 8vo._ _Price 7s. 6d. net_
DESCRIPTIVE NOTE.
The author gives us here a peep at the wonderful history of the
kinds of animals which no longer exist on the surface of the globe
in a living state, though once they flourished and held their own.
Young and old readers will alike enjoy Prof. Lankester’s interesting
narrative of these strange creatures, some of which became extinct
millions of years ago, others within our own memory. The author’s
account of the finding of their extant remains, their probable habits
and functions of life, and their places in the world’s long history,
is illustrated profusely from point to point, adding greatly to the
entertainment of the story.
_=Nature=_: “ ... We give the book a hearty welcome, feeling sure
that its perusal will draw many young recruits to the army of
naturalists, and many readers to its pages.”
_=The Times=_: “There has been published no book on this
subject combining so successfully the virtues of accuracy and
attractiveness.... Dr. Lankester’s methods as an expositor are
well known, but they have never been more pleasantly exemplified
than in the present book.”
_=The Athenæum=_: “Examples of Extinct Animals and their living
representatives Professor Lankester has described with a masterly
hand in these present pages.”
LONDON
ARCHIBALD CONSTABLE & CO LTD
10 ORANGE STREET, LEICESTER SQUARE
* * * * * *
Eyre & Spottiswoode, H.M. Printers, London
DESCRIPTION OF THE FRONTISPIECE
The upper figure is from a cast of the celebrated specimen found in
a river gravel in Java, probably of as great age as the palæolithic
gravels of Europe. Though rightly to be regarded as a ‘man’--the
creature which possessed this skull has been given the name
‘_Pithecanthropus_.’ The shape of the cranial dome differs from
that of a well-developed European human skull (shewn in the lower
photograph, that of a Greek skull) in the same features as do the
very ancient prehistoric skulls from the Belgian caves of Spey,
and from the Neanderthal of the Rhineland. These differences are,
however, measurably greater in the Javanese skull.
The three great features of difference are: (1) the great size of the
eye-brow ridges (the part below and in front of A in the figures) in
the Java skull; (2) the much greater relative height of the middle
and back part of the cranial dome (lines _e_ and _f_) in the Greek
skull; (3) the much greater prominence in the Greek skull of the
front part of the cranial dome--the prefrontal area or frontal ‘boss’
(the part in front of the line A C, the depth of which is shewn by
the line _d_).
The parts of the cranial cavity thus obviously more capacious in
the Greek skull are precisely those which are small in the Apes and
overlie those convolutions of the brain which have been specially
developed in Man as compared with the highest Apes.
The line A B in both the figures is the ophryo-tentorial line. It is
drawn from the ophryon (the mid-point in the line drawn across the
narrowest part of the frontal bone just above the eye-brow ridges),
which corresponds externally to the most anterior limit of the brain,
to the extra-tentorial point (between the occipital ridges) and is
practically the base line of the cerebrum. The lines _e_ and _f_ are
perpendiculars on this base line, the first half-way between A and B,
the second half-way between the first and the extra-tentorial point.
C is the point known to craniologists as ‘bregma,’ the meeting point
of the frontal and the two parietal bones.
The line A C is drawn as a straight line joining A and C--but if the
skull is accurately posed it corresponds to the edge of the plane at
right angles to the sagittal plane of the skull--which traverses both
bregma (C) and ophryon (A)--and where it ‘cuts’ the skull marks off
the prefrontal area or boss. (See for the full-face view of this area
in the two skulls--Figs. 1 and 2.) The line _d_ is a perpendicular
let fall from the point of greatest prominence of the prefrontal area
on to the prefrontal plane. It indicates the depth of the prefrontal
cerebral region. Drawn on both sides on the surface of the bone and
looked at from in front (the white dotted line in Figs. 1 and 2) it
gives the maximum breadth of the prefrontal area.
By dividing the ophryo-tentorial line into 100 units, and using those
units as measures, the depths of the brain cavity in the regions
plumbed by the lines _d_, _e_, and _f_, can be expressed numerically
and their differences in a series of skulls stated in percentage of
the ophryo-tentorial length.
CONTENTS
PAGE
CHAPTER I.--NATURE’S INSURGENT SON 1
CHAPTER II.--THE ADVANCE OF SCIENCE, 1881-1906 66
CHAPTER III.--NATURE’S REVENGES: THE SLEEPING SICKNESS 159
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
FRONTISPIECE:--Profile views of the Cranial Dome of
_Pithecanthropus erectus_, the ape-like man from
an ancient river gravel in Java, and of a Greek skull.
FIG. 1.--Frontal view of the Cranial Dome of
_Pithecanthropus_ 16
FIG. 2.--Frontal view of the same Greek skull as that shown
in the frontispiece 16
FIG. 3.--Eoliths, of ‘borer’ shape, from Ightham, Kent 18
FIG. 4.--Eoliths of trinacrial shape, from Ightham, Kent 20
FIG. 5.--Brain casts of four large Mammals 23
FIG. 6.--_Spironema pallidum_, the microbe of Syphilis
discovered by Fritz Schaudinn 37
FIG. 7.--The Canals in Mars 43
FIG. 8.--The Canals in Mars 44
FIG. 9.--Becquerel’s shadow-print obtained by rays from
Uranium Salt 73
FIG. 10.--Diagrams of the visible lines of the Spectrum
given by incandescent Helium and Radium 76
FIG. 11.--The transformation of Radium Emanation into
Helium (spectra) 83
FIG. 12.--Dry-plate photograph of a Nebula and surrounding
stars 90
FIG. 13.--The Freshwater Jelly fish, _Limnocodium_ 97
FIG. 14.--Polyp of _Limnocodium_ 97
FIG. 15.--Sense-organ of _Limnocodium_ 97
FIG. 16.--The Freshwater Jelly-fish of Lake Tanganyika 98
FIG. 17.--Sir Harry Johnston’s specimen of the Okapi 99
FIG. 18.--Bandoliers cut from the striped skin of the Okapi 99
FIG. 19.--Skull of the horned male of the Okapi 100
FIG. 20.--The metamorphosis of the young of the common Eel 101
FIG. 21.--A unicellular parasite of the common Octopus,
producing spermatozoa 102
FIG. 22.--The _Coccidium_, a microscopic parasite of
the Rabbit, producing spermatozoa 102
FIG. 23.--Spermatozoa of a unicellular parasite inhabiting
a Centipede 103
FIG. 24.--The motile fertilizing elements (antherozoids or
spermatozoa) of a peculiar cone-bearing tree, the
_Cycas revoluta_ 104
FIG. 25.--The gigantic extinct Reptile, _Triceratops_ 106
FIG. 26.--A large carnivorous Reptile from the Triassic
rocks of North Russia 107
FIG. 27.--The curious fish _Drepanaspis_, from the
Old Red Sandstone of Germany 107
FIG. 28.--The oldest Fossil Fish known 108
FIG. 29.--The skull and lower jaw of the ancestral Elephant,
_Palæomastodon_, from Egypt 109
FIG. 30.--The latest discovered skull of _Palæomastodon_ 110
FIG. 31.--Skulls of _Meritherium_, an Elephant ancestor,
from the Upper Eocene of Egypt 111
FIG. 32.--The nodules on the roots of bean-plants and the
nitrogen-fixing microbe, _Bacillus radicola_,
which produces them 114
FIG. 33.--The continuity of the protoplasm of vegetable
cells 116
FIG. 34.--Diagram of the structures present in a typical
organic ‘cell’ 117
FIG. 35.--The Number of the Chromosomes 119
FIG. 36.--The Number of the Chromosomes 120
FIGS. 37 to 42.--Phagocytes engulphing disease germs--drawn
by Metschnikoff 136-7
FIG. 43.--A Phagocyte containing three Spirilla, the germs
of relapsing fever, which it has engulphed 137
FIG. 44.--The life-history of the Malaria Parasite 142
FIG. 45.--The first blood-cell parasite described, the
_Lankesterella_ of Frog’s blood 144
FIG. 46.--Various kinds of Trypanosomes 145
FIG. 47.--The Laboratory of the Marine Biological Association
on the Citadel Hill, Plymouth 155
FIG. 48.--The Tsetze fly, _Glossina morsitans_ 172
FIG. 49.--The Trypanosome of Frog’s blood 173
FIG. 50.--The Trypanosome which causes the Sleeping
Sickness 176
FIG. 51.--The Trypanosome of the disease called “Dourine” 177
FIGS. 52 to 56.--Stages in the growth and multiplication of
a Trypanosome which lives for part of its life in
the blood of the little owl, _Athene noctua_,
and for the other part in the gut of the common
Gnat (_Culex_) 180-3
PREFACE
_This little volume is founded on three discourses which I have
slightly modified for the present purpose, and have endeavoured
to render interesting by the introduction of illustrative process
blocks, which are described sufficiently fully to form a large
extension of the original text._
_The first, entitled ‘Nature’s Insurgent Son,’ formed, under another
title, the Romanes lecture at Oxford in 1905. Its object is to
exhibit in brief the ‘Kingdom of Man,’ to shew that there is undue
neglect in the taking over of that possession by mankind, and to urge
upon our Universities the duty of acting the leading part in removing
that neglect._
_The second is an account, which served as the presidential address
to the British Association at York in 1906, of the progress made in
the last quarter of a century towards the assumption of his kingship
by slowly-moving Man._
_The third, reprinted from the_ Quarterly Review, _is a more detailed
account of recent attempts to deal with a terrible disease--the
Sleeping Sickness of tropical Africa--and furnishes an example of
one of the innumerable directions in which Man brings down disaster
on his head by resisting the old rule of selection of the fit and
destruction of the unfit, and is painfully forced to the conclusion
that knowledge of Nature must be sought and control of her processes
eventually obtained. I am glad to be able to state that as a result
of the representations of the Tropical Diseases Committee of the
Royal Society, and, as I am told, in some measure in consequence of
the explanation of the state of things given in this essay, funds
have been provided by the Colonial Office for the support of a
professorship of Protozoology in the University of London, to which
Mr. E. A. Minchin has been appointed. It is recognized that the only
way in which we can hope to deal effectually with such diseases as
the Sleeping Sickness is by a greatly increased knowledge of the
nature and life-history of the parasitic Protozoa which produce those
diseases._
_I have to thank Mr. John Murray for permission to reprint the
article on Sleeping Sickness, and I am also greatly indebted to
scientific colleagues for assistance in the survey of progress given
in the second discourse. Amongst these I desire especially to mention
Mr. Frederick Soddy, F.R.S., Prof. H. H. Turner, F.R.S., Prof. Sydney
Vines, F.R.S., Mr. MacDougal of Oxford, and Prof. Sherrington, F.R.S.
To Mr. Perceval Lowell I owe my thanks for permission to copy two of
his drawings of Mars, and to the Royal Astronomical Society for the
loan of the star-picture on p. 90._
E. RAY LANKESTER,
_January, 1907_.
ERRATUM.
Page 98: first line of description beneath Fig. 16., _for_
Limnocodium _read_ Limnocnida.
THE KINGDOM OF MAN
CHAPTER I
_NATURE’S INSURGENT SON_
1. THE OUTLOOK.
It has become more and more a matter of conviction to me--and I
believe that I share that conviction with a large body of fellow
students both in this country and other civilized states--that
the time has arrived when the true relation of Nature to Man has
been so clearly ascertained that it should be more generally known
than is at present the case, and that this knowledge should form
far more largely than it does at this moment, the object of human
activity and endeavour,--that it should be, in fact, the guide of
state-government, the trusted basis of the development of human
communities. That it is not so already, that men should still allow
their energies to run in other directions, appears to some of us a
thing so monstrous, so injurious to the prosperity of our fellow
men, that we must do what lies within our power to draw attention
to the conditions and circumstances which attend this neglect, the
evils arising from it, and the benefits which must follow from its
abatement.
2. THE WORD ‘NATURE.’
The signification attached to the word ‘Nature’ is by no means the
same at the present day as it has been in the past: as commonly
used it is a word of varied meanings and limitations, so that
misconception and confusion is liable to be associated with it. By
the professed student of modern sciences it is usually understood
as a name for the entire mechanism of the universe, the kosmos in
all its parts; and it is in this sense that I use it. But many still
identify ‘Nature’ with a limited portion of that great system, and
even retain for it a special application to the animals and plants
of this earth and their immediate surroundings. Thus we have the
term ‘natural history’ and the French term ‘les sciences naturelles’
limited to the study of the more immediate and concrete forms of
animals, plants, and crystals. There is some justification for
separating the conception of Nature as specially concerned in the
production and maintenance of living things from that larger Nature
which embraces, together with this small but deeply significant area,
the whole expanse of the heavens in the one direction and Man himself
in the other. Giordano Bruno, who a little more than 300 years ago
visited Oxford and expounded his views, was perhaps the first to
perceive and teach the unity of this greater Nature, anticipating
thus in his prophetic vision the conclusion which we now accept as
the result of an accumulated mass of evidence. Shakespeare came into
touch with Bruno’s conception, and has contrasted the more limited
and a larger (though not the largest) view of Nature in the words of
Perdita and Polyxenes. Says Perdita:--
‘ ... the fairest flowers o’ the season
Are our carnations, and streak’d gillyvors,
Which some call Nature’s bastards; of that kind
Our rustic garden’s barren; and I care not
To get slips of them.... For I have heard it said,
There is an art which, in their piedness, shares
With great creating nature.’
To which Polyxenes replies:--
‘Say there be--
Yet nature is made better by no mean,
But nature makes that mean: so, over that art,
Which, you say, adds to nature, is an art
That nature makes. You see, sweet maid, we marry
A gentle scion to the wildest stock;
And make conceive a bark of baser kind
By bud of nobler race; this is an art
Which does mend nature,--change it, rather: but
The art itself is nature.’
The larger proportion of so-called educated people even at the
present day have not got beyond Perdita’s view of Nature. They regard
the territory of Nature as a limited one, the play-ground or sport
of all sorts of non-natural demons and fairies, spirits and occult
agencies. Apart from any definite scheme or conception of these
operations, they personify Nature and attribute a variety of virtues
and tendencies to her for which there is no justification. We are
told, according to the fancy of the speaker, that such a course is in
accordance with Nature; that another course is contrary to Nature; we
are urged to return to Nature and we are also urged to resist Nature.
We hear that Nature will find a remedy for every ill, that Nature
is just, that Nature is cruel, that Nature is sweet and our loving
mother. On the one hand Man is regarded as outside of and opposed to
Nature, and his dealings are contrasted favourably or unfavourably
with those of Nature. On the other hand we are informed that Man
must after all submit to Nature and that it is useless to oppose
her. These contradictory views are in fact fragments of various
systems of philosophy of various ages in which the word ‘Nature’ has
been assigned equally various limitations and extensions. Without
attempting to discuss the history and justification of these
different uses of the word Nature, I think that I may here use the
word Nature as indicating the entire kosmos of which this cooling
globe with all upon it is a portion.
3. NATURE-SEARCHERS.
The discovery of regular processes, of expected effects following
upon specified antecedents, of constant properties and qualities in
the material around him, has from the earliest recorded times been a
chief occupation of Man and has led to the attainment by Man of an
extraordinarily complex control of the conditions in which his life
is carried on. But it was not until Bruno’s conception of the unity
of terrestrial nature with that of the kosmos had commended itself
that a deliberate and determined investigation of natural processes,
with a view to their more complete apprehension, was instituted.
One of the earliest and most active steps in this direction was the
foundation, less than 250 years ago, of the Royal Society of London
for the Promotion of Natural Knowledge, by a body of students who
had organized their conferences and inquiries whilst resident in
Oxford.[1]
All over Western Europe such associations or academies for the
building up of the New Philosophy (as it was called here) came
into existence. It is a fact which is strangely overlooked at the
present day, when the assumption is made that the acquirement of
a knowledge of Greek grammar is the traditional and immemorial
occupation of Oxford students--that until the modern days of the
eighteenth century (‘modern’ in the history of Oxford) Greek was
less known in Oxford than Hebrew is at present, and that the study
of Nature--Nature-knowledge and Nature-control--was the appropriate
occupation of her learned men. It is indeed a fact that the very
peculiar classical education at present insisted on in Oxford, and
imposed by her on the public schools of the country, is a modern
innovation, an unintentional and, in a biological sense, ‘morbid’
outgrowth of that ‘Humanism’ to which a familiarity with the dead
languages was, but is no longer, the pathway.
4. THE DOCTRINE OF EVOLUTION.
What is sometimes called the scientific movement, but may be
more appropriately described as the Nature-searching movement,
rapidly attained an immense development. In the latter half of
the last century this culminated in so complete a knowledge of the
movements of the heavenly bodies, their chemical nature and physical
condition--so detailed a determination of the history of the crust
of this earth and of the living things upon it, of the chemical and
physical processes which go on in Man and other living things, and
of the structure of Man as compared with the animals most like him,
and of the enormous length of time during which Man has existed on
the earth--that it became possible to establish a general doctrine
of the evolution of the kosmos, with more special detail in regard
to the history of this earth and the development of Man from a lower
animal ancestry. Animals were, in their turn, shown to have developed
from simplest living matter, and this from less highly elaborated
compounds of chemical ‘elements’ differentiated at a still earlier
stage of evolution. There is, it may be said without exaggeration,
no school or body of thinkers at the present day who are acquainted
with the facts now ascertained, which denies the orderly evolution
of the kosmos by the regular operation of a more or less completely
ascertained series of properties resident in the material of which
it consists.[2] The process of evolution--the interaction of these
ascertainable, if not fully ascertained properties--has led (it is
held), in the case of the cooling cinder which we call the earth--by
an inevitable and predestined course--to the formation of that which
we call living matter and eventually of Man himself. From this
process all disorderly or arbitrary interferences must, it seems, be
excluded. The old fancies as to presiding demons or fairies--which
it was imagined had for their business to interrupt the supposed
feeble and limited efforts of Nature, as yet unexplored and
unappreciated--have passed out of mind. The consensus is complete:
Man is held to be a part of Nature, a product of the definite and
orderly evolution which is universal; a being resulting from and
driven by the one great nexus of mechanism which we call Nature. He
stands alone, face to face with that relentless mechanism. It is his
destiny to understand and to control it.
5. UNWARRANTED INFERENCES FROM THE EVOLUTION OF MAN.
There are not wanting those who, accepting this conclusion, seek to
belittle Man and endeavour to represent that the veil is lifted, that
all is ‘explained’ obvious, commonplace, and mean in regard to the
significance of life and of Man, because it has become clear that
the kosmic process has brought them forth in due order. There are
others who rightly perceive that life is no common property of our
cooling matter, but unique and exceptional, and that Man stands apart
from and above all natural products, whether animate or inanimate.
Some of these thinkers appear to accept the conclusion that if life
and Man are regarded as products of the kosmic process--that is, of
Nature--‘life’ and ‘Man’ lose so much in importance and significance
that dire consequences must follow to Man’s conception of his dignity
and to the essential features of his systems of conduct and social
organization. Accordingly they cling to the belief that living matter
and Man have not proceeded from an orderly evolution of Nature, but
are ‘super’ natural. It is found on the other hand, by many who have
considered these speculations, and hold no less explicitly than do
the ‘supernaturalists’ that life is a momentous and peculiar feature
of our earth’s surface and Man the isolated and unparalleled ‘piece
of work,’ ‘the beauty of the world,’ ‘the paragon of animals’--it
is found by many such, I say, that nothing is gained in regard to
our conception of Man’s nobility and significance by supposing that
he and the living matter which has given rise to him, are not the
outcome of that system of orderly process which we call Nature.
There is one consideration in regard to this matter which, it seems,
is often overlooked and should be emphasized. It is sometimes--and
perhaps with a sufficient excuse in a want of acquaintance with
Nature--held by those who oppose the conclusion that Man has been
evolved by natural processes, that the products of Nature are
arbitrary, haphazard, and due to chance, and that Man cannot be
conceived of as originating by chance. This notion of ‘chance’ is a
misleading figment inherited by the modern world from days of blank
ignorance. The ‘Nature-searchers’ of to-day admit no such possibility
as ‘chance.’ It will be in the recollection of many here, that a
leading writer and investigator of the Victorian Era, the physicist
John Tyndall, pointed out in a celebrated address delivered at
Belfast that according to the conceptions of the mechanism of Nature
arrived at by modern science--the structure of that mechanism is such
that it would have been possible for a being of adequate intelligence
inspecting the gaseous nebula from which our planetary system has
evolved to have foreseen in that luminous vapour the Belfast audience
and the professor addressing it!
The fallacy that in given but unknown circumstances anything
whatever may occur in spite of the fact that some one thing has been
irrevocably arranged to occur, is a common one.[3] It is correct to
assume in the absence of any pertinent knowledge (if we are compelled
to estimate the probabilities) that one event is as likely as another
to occur; but nevertheless there is no ‘chance’ in the matter since
the event has been already determined, and might be predicted by
those possessing the knowledge which we lack. Thus then it appears
that the conclusion that Man is a part of Nature is by no means
equivalent to asserting that he has originated by ‘blind chance’; it
is in fact a specific assertion that he is the predestined outcome of
an orderly--and to a large extent ‘perceptible’--mechanism.[4]
6. NATURE’S MODE OF PRODUCING ORGANIC FORMS.
The general process by which the higher and more elaborate forms of
life, and eventually man himself, have been produced has been shown
by Darwin to depend upon two important properties of living matter
manifested in connexion with the multiplication of individuals.
Living matter has a special property of adding to its bulk by
taking up the chemical elements which it requires and building up
the food so taken as additional living matter. It further has the
power of separating from itself minute particles or germs which
feed and grow independently, and thus multiply their kind. It is
a fundamental character of this process of reproduction that the
detached or pullulated germ inherits or carries with it from its
parents the peculiarities of form and structure of its parent. This
is the property known as Heredity. It is most essentially modified
by another property--namely, that though eventually growing to be
closely like the parent, the germ (especially when it is formed, as
is usual, by the fusion of two germs from two separate parents) is
never identical in all respects with the parent. It shows Variation.
In virtue of Heredity, the new congenital variations shown by a new
generation are transmitted to their offspring when in due time they
pullulate or produce germs. Man has long been aware of this; and, by
selecting variations of beasts, birds, or plants agreeable or useful
to him, has intensified such variations and produced animals and
plants in many features very unlike those with which he started.
It was Darwin’s merit to show that a process of selection which he
called ‘Natural Selection’ must take place in the free untouched
conditions under which animals and plants exist, and have existed
for ages, on this globe. Both animals and plants produce germs, or
young, in excess--usually in vast excess. The world, the earth’s
surface, is practically full, that is to say, fully occupied. Only
one pair of young can grow up to take the place of the pair--male
and female--which have launched a dozen, or it may be as many as a
hundred thousand, young individuals on the world. The property of
Variation ensures that amongst this excess of young there are many
differences. Eventually those survive which are most fitted to the
special conditions under which this particular organism has to live.
The conditions may, and indeed in long lapses of time must, change,
and thus some variation not previously favoured will gain the day
and survive. The ‘struggle for existence’ of Darwin is the struggle
amongst all the superabundant young of a given species, in a given
area, to gain the necessary food, to escape voracious enemies, and
gain protection from excesses of heat, cold, moisture, and dryness.
One pair in the new generation--only one pair--survive for every
parental pair. Animal population does not increase: ‘Increase and
multiply’ has never been said by Nature to her lower creatures.
Locally, and from time to time, owing to exceptional changes, a
species may multiply here and decrease there; but it is important
to realize that the ‘struggle for existence’ in Nature--that is to
say, among the animals and plants of this earth untouched by man--is
a desperate one, however tranquil and peaceful the battlefield may
appear to us. The struggle for existence takes place, not as a clever
French writer[5] glibly informs his readers, between different
species, but between individuals of the same species, brothers and
sisters and cousins. The struggle between a beast of prey which
seeks to nourish itself and the buffalo which defends its life with
its horns is not ‘the struggle for existence’ so named by Darwin.
Moreover, the struggle among the members of a species in natural
conditions differs totally from the mere struggle for advancement or
wealth with which uneducated writers so frequently compare it. It
differs essentially in this--that in Nature’s struggle for existence,
death, immediate obliteration, is the fate of the vanquished, whilst
the only reward to the victors--few, very few, but rare and beautiful
in the fitness which has carried them to victory--is the permission
to reproduce their kind--to carry on by heredity to another
generation the specific qualities by which they triumphed.
It is not generally realized how severe is the pressure and
competition in Nature--not between different species, but between the
immature population of one and the same species, precisely because
they are of the same species and have exactly the same needs. From a
human point of view the pressure under which many wild things live
is awful in its severity and relentless tenacity. Not only are new
forms established by natural selection, but the old forms, when they
exactly fit the mould presented as it were for competitive filling,
are maintained by the same unremitting process. A distinctive quality
in the beauty of natural productions (in which man delights) is due
to the unobtrusive yet tremendous slaughter of the unfit which is
incessantly going on, and the absolute restriction of the privilege
of parentage to the happy few who attain to the standard described as
‘the fittest.’
7. THE LIMITED VARIETY OF NATURE’S PRODUCTS.
The process of development of an immense variety of animal and
vegetable forms has proceeded in this way through countless ages
of geologic time, but it must not be supposed that any and every
conceivable form and variety has been produced. There are only two
great diverging lines of descent from original living matter--only
the animals and the plants. And in each of these there are and have
been only a limited number of branches to the pedigree--some coming
off at a lower level, others at higher points when more elaborate
structure has been attained. It is easy to imagine groups of both
plants and animals with characters and structures which have never
existed and never will exist. The limitation of the whole process
in spite of its enormous duration in time, its gigantic output and
variety, is a striking and important fact. Linnaeus said, ‘There are
just as many species as in the beginning the Infinite Being created’;
and the modern naturalist can go no further than the paraphrase of
this, and must say, ‘There are and have been just so many and just
so few varieties of animal and vegetable structure on this earth as
it was possible for the physical and chemical contents of the still
molten globe to form up to the hour now reached.’
8. THE EMERGENCE OF MAN.
As to how and when man emerged from the terrestrial animal population
so strictly controlled and moulded by natural selection is a matter
upon which we gain further information year by year. There must be
many here who remember, as I do, the astounding and almost sudden
discovery some forty-five years ago of abundant and overwhelming
evidence that man had existed in Western Europe as a contemporary
of the mammoth and rhinoceros, the hyaena and the lion. The dispute
over the facts submitted to the scientific world by Boucher de
Perthes was violent and of short duration. The immense antiquity of
man was established and accepted on all sides just before Mr. Darwin
published his book on _The Origin of Species_. The palæolithic
implements, though not improbably made 150,000 years ago, do not, any
more than do the imperfect skulls occasionally found in association
with them, indicate a condition of the human race much more
monkey-like than is presented by existing savage races (see Figs.
1 and 2 and Frontispiece, and their explanations). The implements
themselves are manufactured with great skill and artistic feeling.
Within the last ten years much rougher flint implements, of peculiar
types, have been discovered in gravels which are 500 feet above the
level of the existing rivers (see Figs. 3 and 4). These “Eoliths”
of the South of England indicate a race of men of less-developed
skill than the makers of the Palæoliths, and carry the antiquity of
man at least as far back beyond the Palæoliths as these are from
the present day. We have as yet found no remains giving the direct
basis for conclusions on the subject; but judging by the analogy
(not by any means a conclusive method) furnished by the history of
other large animals now living alongside of man--such as the horse,
the rhinoceros, the tapir, the wolf, the hyaena, and the bear--it is
not improbable that it was in the remote period known as the lower
Miocene--remote even as compared with the gravels in which Eoliths
occur--that Natural Selection began to favour that increase in the
size of the brain of a large and not very powerful semi-erect ape
which eventuated, after some hundreds of thousands of years, in the
breeding-out of a being with a relatively enormous brain-case, a
skilful hand, and an inveterate tendency to throw stones, flourish
sticks, protect himself in caves, and in general to defeat aggression
and satisfy his natural appetites by the use of his wits rather than
by strength alone--in which, however, he was not deficient.
Probably this creature had nearly the full size of brain and every
other physical character of modern man, although he had not as yet
stumbled upon the art of making fire by friction, nor converted
his conventional grunts and groans, his screams, laughter, and
interjections into a language corresponding to (and thenceforth
developing) his power of thought.
[Illustration: FIG. 1.--_Pithecanthropus_ from Java
FIG. 2.--Greek Skull
Photographs of a front view of the two skulls shewn in profile
in the frontispiece, taken so as to shew the breadth of the
‘forehead’ or prefrontal area, which is seen to be very much
greater in the Greek skull (Fig. 2) than in the Javanese
_Pithecanthropus_ (Fig. 1). The prefrontal area is marked out
by a black dotted line, the outline of a plane (the prefrontal
plane) which is at right angles to the sagittal plane and passes
through the meeting point of the frontal with the two parietal
bones above; whilst below it passes through the median point
called ‘ophryon.’ The plane of the picture is parallel with this
prefrontal plane. The white dotted line gives the breadth of
the boss-like prefrontal area. It is identical in position with
the line _d_ in the side view of the same skulls given in the
frontispiece. The black dotted line is identical in position with
the line A C in those figures. The two specimens are equally
reduced in the photograph. (Original).]
[Illustration: FIG. 3.
Photographs of eight Eoliths of one and the same shape, namely,
with a chipped or worked tooth-like prominence, rendering the
flint fit for use as a ‘borer’--photographed of half the actual
size (linear measurement) from specimens found near Ightham,
Kent, in the high-level gravel--which form part of the Prestwich
collection in the Natural History Museum, Cromwell Road, London.
Many others of the same shape have been found in the same
locality. These and the trinacrial implements photographed in
Fig. 4 are far older than the oval and leaf-shaped ‘palæoliths’
of the low-lying gravels of the valleys of the Thames, Somme, and
other rivers. (Original).]
[Illustration: FIG. 4.
Photographs of six Eoliths of the ‘shoulder-of-mutton’ or
‘trinacrial’ type--from the same locality and collection as those
shewn in Fig. 3. The photographs are of half the length of the
actual specimens. A considerable number of worked flints of this
peculiar shape have been found in the same locality. Possibly
their shape enabled the primitive men who ‘chipped’ and used them
to attach them by thongs to a stick or club. The descriptive term
‘trinacrial’ is suggested by me for these flints in allusion to
the form of the island of Sicily which they resemble. (Original).]
9. THE ENLARGED BRAIN.
The leading feature in the development and separation of man from
amongst other animals is undoubtedly the relatively enormous size of
the brain in man, and the corresponding increase in its activities
and capacity. It is a very striking fact that it was not in the
ancestors of man alone that this increase in the size of the brain
took place at this same period, viz. the Miocene. The great mammals
such as the titanotherium, which represented the rhinoceros in early
Tertiary times, had a brain which was in proportion to the bulk of
the body, not more than one-eighth the volume of the brain of the
modern rhinoceros (see Fig. 5). Other great mammals of the earlier
Tertiary period were in the same case; and the ancestors of the
horse, which are better known than those of any other modern animal,
certainly had very much smaller brains in proportion to the size of
their bodies than has their descendant.
[Illustration: FIG. 5.
Four casts of the brain-cavities of a series of large Ungulate
Mammals in order to shew the relatively small size of the
cerebral hemispheres of the extinct creature from which A is
taken.
A is that of _Dinoceras_, a huge extinct Eocene mammal which was
as large as a Rhinoceros; B is that of Hippopotamus; C of Horse;
and D of Rhinoceros.]
We may well ask to what this sudden and marked increase in the size
of the brain in several lines of the animal pedigree is due. It
seems that the inborn hereditary nervous mechanism by which many
simple and necessary movements of the body are controlled and brought
into relation with the outer world acting upon the sense-organs,
can be carried in a relatively small bulk of brain-substance.
Fish, lizards, and crocodiles with their small brains carry on a
complex and effective life of relation with their surroundings.
It appears that the increased bulk of cerebral substance means
increased ‘educability’--an increased power of storing up individual
experience--which tends to take the place of the inherited mechanism
with which it is often in antagonism. The power of profiting by
individual experience, in fact educability, must in conditions of
close competition be, when other conditions are equal, an immense
advantage to its possessor. It seems that we have to imagine that the
adaptation of mammalian form to the various conditions of life had in
Miocene times reached a point when further alteration and elaboration
of the various types, which we know then existed, could lead to no
advantage. The variations presented for selection in the struggle for
existence presented no advantage--the ‘fittest’ had practically been
reached, and was destined to survive with little change. Assuming
such a relative lull in the development of mere mechanical form,
it is obvious that the opportunity for those individuals with the
most ‘educable’ brains to defeat their competitors would arise. No
marked improvement in the instrument being possible, the reward, the
triumph, the survival would fall to those who possessed most skill in
the use of the instrument. And in successive generations the bigger
and more educable brains would survive and mate, and thus bigger and
bigger brains be produced.
It would not be difficult (though not, perhaps, profitable) to
imagine the conditions which have favoured the continuation of this
process to a far greater length in the Simian line of the pedigree
than in other mammalian groups. The result is that the creature
called Man emerged with an educable brain of some five or six times
the bulk (in proportion to his size and weight) of that of any other
surviving Simian. Great as is this difference, it is one of the most
curious facts in the history of man’s development that the bulk of
his brain does not appear to have continued to increase in any very
marked degree since early Palæolithic times. The cranial capacity of
many savage races and of some of the most ancient human skulls is
only a little less than that of the average man of highly-civilised
race. The value of the mental activities in which primitive man
differs from the highest apes may be measured in some degree by
the difference in the size of the man’s and the ape’s brain; but
the difference in the size of the brain of Isaac Newton and an
Australian black-fellow is not in the remotest degree proportionate
to the difference in their mental qualities. Man, it would seem, at
a very remote period attained the extraordinary development of brain
which marked him off from the rest of the animal world, but has
ever since been developing the powers and qualities of this organ
without increasing its size, or materially altering in other bodily
features.[6]
10. THE PROGRESS OF MAN.
The origin of Man by the process of Natural Selection is one chapter
in man’s history; another one begins with the consideration of his
further development and his diffusion over the surface of the globe.
The mental qualities which have developed in Man, though traceable in
a vague and rudimentary condition in some of his animal associates,
are of such an unprecedented power and so far dominate everything
else in his activities as a living organism, that they have to a
very large extent, if not entirely, cut him off from the general
operation of that process of Natural Selection and survival of the
fittest which up to their appearance had been the law of the living
world. They justify the view that Man forms a new departure in the
gradual unfolding of Nature’s predestined scheme. Knowledge, reason,
self-consciousness, will, are the attributes of Man. It is not my
purpose to attempt to trace their development from lower phases of
mental activity in man’s animal ancestors, nor even to suggest the
steps by which that development has proceeded. What we call the
will or volition of Man--a discussion of the nature and limitation
of which would be impossible in these pages and is happily not
necessary for my present purpose--has become a power in Nature, an
_imperium in imperio_, which has profoundly modified not only man’s
own history but that of the whole living world and the face of the
planet on which he exists. Nature’s inexorable discipline of death
to those who do not rise to her standard--survival and parentage for
those alone who do--has been from the earliest times more and more
definitely resisted by the will of Man. If we may for the purpose of
analysis, as it were, extract Man from the rest of Nature of which
he is truly a product and part, then we may say that Man is Nature’s
rebel. Where Nature says ‘Die!’ Man says ‘I will live.’ According
to the law previously in universal operation, Man should have been
limited in geographical area, killed by extremes of cold or of heat,
subject to starvation if one kind of diet were unobtainable, and
should have been unable to increase and multiply, just as are his
animal relatives, without losing his specific structure and acquiring
new physical characters according to the requirements of the new
conditions into which he strayed--should have perished except on
the condition of becoming a new morphological ‘species.’ But Man’s
wits and his will have enabled him to cross rivers and oceans by
rafts and boats, to clothe himself against cold, to shelter himself
from heat and rain, to prepare an endless variety of food by fire,
and to ‘increase and multiply’ as no other animal without change of
form, without submitting to the terrible axe of selection wielded by
ruthless Nature over all other living things on this globe. And as
he has more and more obtained this control over his surroundings,
he has expanded that unconscious protective attitude towards his
immature offspring which natural selection had already favoured and
established in the animal race, into a conscious and larger love for
his tribe, his race, his nationality, and his kind. He has developed
speech, the power of communicating, and above all of recording and
handing on from generation to generation his thought and knowledge.
He has formed communities, built cities, and set up empires. At every
step of his progress Man has receded further and further from the
ancient rule exercised by Nature. He has advanced so far and become
so unfitted to the earlier rule, that to suppose that Man can ‘return
to Nature’ is as unreasonable as to suppose that an adult animal can
return to its mother’s womb.
In early tribal times natural selection still imposed the death
penalty on failure. The stronger, the more cunning, the better armed,
the more courageous tribe or family group, exterminated by actual
slaughter or starvation the neighbouring tribes less gifted in one
or all of these qualities. But from what we know of the history of
warlike exterminating savage tribes at the present day--as, for
instance, the Masai of East Africa--it seems unlikely that the method
of extermination--that is, of true natural selection--had much effect
in man’s development after the very earliest period. Union and
absorption were more usual results of the contact of primitive tribes
than struggles to the death. The expulsion of one group by another
from a desired territory was more usual than the destruction of the
conquered. In spite of the frequent assertions to the contrary, it
seems that neither the more ancient wars of mankind for conquest and
migration nor the present and future wars for commercial privilege
have any real equivalence to the simple removal by death of the
unfit and the survival and reproduction of the fit, which we know as
Natural Selection.[7]
The standard raised by the rebel man is not that of ‘fitness’ to the
conditions proffered by extra-human nature, but is one of an ideal
comfort, prosperity, and conscious joy in life--imposed by the will
of man and involving a control and in important respects a subversion
of what were Nature’s methods of dealing with life before she had
produced her insurgent son. The progress of man in the acquirement
of this control of Nature has been one of enormous rapidity
within the historical period, and within the last two centuries
has led on the one hand to immensely increased facilities in the
application of mechanical power, in locomotion, in agriculture,
and in endless arts and industries; and on the other hand to the
mitigation of disease and pain. The men whom we may designate as
‘the Nature-searchers’--those who founded the New Philosophy of the
Invisible College at Oxford and the Royal Society in London--have
placed boundless power in the hands of mankind.
11. THE ATTAINMENT BY MAN OF THE KNOWLEDGE OF HIS RELATIONS TO NATURE.
But to many the greatest result achieved by the progress of
Natural Knowledge seems not to have been so much in its practical
applications and its material gifts to humanity as in the fact that
Man has arrived through it at spiritual emancipation and freedom of
thought.
In the latter part of the last century man’s place in Nature became
clearly marked out by the accumulation of definite evidence. The
significance and the immeasurable importance of the knowledge of
Nature to philosophy and the highest regions of speculative thought
are expressed in the lines of one who most truly and with keenest
insight embodied in his imperishable verse the wisdom and the
aspirations of the Victorian age:--
‘Flower in the crannied wall,
I pluck you out of the crannies:
I hold you here, root and all, in my hand
Little flower--but if I could understand
What you are, root and all, and all in all,
I should know what God and man is.’
To many the nearer approach to that ‘understanding’ has seemed the
greatest and a sufficient result of scientific researches. The
recognition that such an understanding leads to such vast knowledge
would seem to ensure further and combined effort to bring it nearer
and nearer to the complete form, even if the perfect understanding of
the ‘all in all’ be for ever unattainable. Nevertheless, the clearer
apprehension, so recently attained, of man’s origin and destiny, and
of the enormous powers of which he has actually the control, has
not led to any very obvious change in the attitude of responsible
leaders of human activity in the great civilized communities of the
world. They still attach little or no importance to the acquirement
of a knowledge of Nature: they remain fixed in the old ruts of
traditional ignorance, and obstinately turn their faces towards the
past, still believing that the teachings and sayings of antiquity
and the contemplation, not to say the detailed enumeration, of the
blunders and crimes of its ancestors, can furnish mankind with the
knowledge necessary for its future progress. The comparative failure
of what may be called the speculative triumph of the New Philosophy
to produce immediate practical consequences has even led some among
those prejudiced by custom and education in favour of the exclusive
employment of Man’s thought and ingenuity in the delineation and
imaginative resurrection of the youthful follies and excesses of
his race, to declare that the knowledge of Nature is a failure, the
New Philosophy of the Nature-searchers a fraud. Thus the well-known
French publicist M. Brunetière has taken upon himself to declare what
he calls the Bankruptcy of Science.
12. THE REGNUM HOMINIS.
As a matter of fact the new knowledge of Nature--the
newly-ascertained capacity of Man for a control of Nature so thorough
as to be almost unlimited--has not as yet had an opportunity
for showing what it can do. A lull after victory, a lethargic
contentment, has to some extent followed on the crowning triumphs of
the great Nature-searchers whose days were numbered with the closing
years of that nineteenth century which through them marks an epoch.
No power has called on Man to arise and enter upon the possession
of his kingdom--the ‘Regnum Hominis’ foreseen by Francis Bacon and
pictured by him to an admiring but incredulous age with all the
fervour and picturesque detail of which he was capable. And yet at
this moment the mechanical difficulties, the want of assurance and
of exact knowledge, which necessarily prevented Bacon’s schemes from
taking practical shape, have been removed. The will to possess and
administer this vast territory alone is wanting.
13. MAN’S DESTINY.
Within the last few years an attempt to spur the will of Englishmen
in this direction has been made by some who have represented
that this way lie great fortunes, national ascendancy, imperial
domination. The effort has not met with much success. On the other
hand, I speak for those who would urge the conscious and deliberate
assumption of his kingdom by Man--not as a matter of markets and of
increased opportunity for the cosmopolitan dealers in finance--but as
an absolute duty, the fulfilment of Man’s destiny,[8] a necessity the
incidence of which can only be deferred and not avoided.
This, is indeed, the definite purpose of my discourse; to point out
that civilized man has proceeded so far in his interference with
extra-human nature, has produced for himself and the living organisms
associated with him such a special state of things by his rebellion
against natural selection and his defiance of Nature’s pre-human
dispositions, that he must either go on and acquire firmer control of
the conditions or perish miserably by the vengeance certain to fall
on the half-hearted meddler in great affairs. We may indeed compare
civilized man to a successful rebel against Nature who by every step
forward renders himself liable to greater and greater penalties, and
so cannot afford to pause or fail in one single step. Or again we
may think of him as the heir to a vast and magnificent kingdom who
has been finally educated so as to fit him to take possession of his
property, and is at length left alone to do his best; he has wilfully
abrogated, in many important respects, the laws of his mother Nature
by which the kingdom was hitherto governed; he has gained some power
and advantage by so doing, but is threatened on every hand by dangers
and disasters hitherto restrained: no retreat is possible--his only
hope is to control, as he knows that he can, the sources of these
dangers and disasters. They already make him wince: how long will
he sit listening to the fairy-tales of his boyhood and shrink from
manhood’s task?
A brief consideration of well-ascertained facts is sufficient to show
that Man, whilst emancipating himself from the destructive methods
of natural selection, has accumulated a new series of dangers and
difficulties with which he must incessantly contend.
14. MAN AND DISEASE.
In the extra-human system of Nature there is no disease and there
is no conjunction of incompatible forms of life, such as Man has
brought about on the surface of the globe. In extra-human Nature
the selection of the fittest necessarily eliminates those diseased
or liable to disease. Disease both of parasitic and congenital
origin occurs as a minor phenomenon. The congenitally diseased are
destroyed before they can reproduce: the attacks of parasites great
and small either serve only to carry off the congenitally weak, and
thus strengthen the race, or become harmless by the survival of those
individuals which, owing to peculiar qualities in their tissues, can
tolerate such attacks without injury, resulting in the establishment
of immune races. It is a remarkable thing--which possibly may be less
generally true than our present knowledge seems to suggest--that the
adjustment of organisms to their surroundings is so severely complete
in Nature apart from Man, that diseases are unknown as constant and
normal phenomena under those conditions. It is no doubt difficult to
investigate this matter, since the presence of Man as an observer
itself implies human intervention. But it seems to be a legitimate
view that every disease to which animals (and probably plants also)
are liable, excepting as a transient and very exceptional occurrence,
is due to Man’s interference. The diseases of cattle, sheep, pigs,
and horses, are not known except in domesticated herds and those wild
creatures to which Man’s domesticated productions have communicated
them. The trypanosome lives in the blood of wild game and of rats
without producing mischief. The hosts have become tolerant of the
parasite. It is only when man brings his unselected, humanly-nurtured
races of cattle and horses into contact with the parasite, that it
is found to have deadly properties.[9] The various cattle-diseases
which in Africa have done so much harm to native cattle, and have
in some regions exterminated big game, have _per contra_ been
introduced by man through his importation of diseased animals of his
own breeding from Europe. Most, if not all, animals in extra-human
conditions, including the minuter things such as insects, shell-fish,
and invisible aquatic organisms, have been brought into a condition
of ‘adjustment’ to their parasites as well as to the other conditions
in which they live: it is this most delicate and efficient balance
of Nature which Man everywhere upsets. A solitary case of a ravaging
epidemic constantly recurring amongst animals living in extra-human
conditions, one of a strangely interesting character, is the
phosphorescent disease of the sand-shrimps or sand-hoppers. This is
due to a microscopic parasite, a bacterium, which infests the blood
and is phosphorescent, so that the infected sand-hopper has at night
the brilliancy of a glow-worm. The disease is deadly, and is common
among the sand-hoppers dwelling in the sandy flats of the north coast
of France, where it may readily be studied.[10] It has not been
recorded as occurring in this country. It is not at all improbable
that this disease is also in truth one which only occurs in the trail
of Man. It is quite likely that the artificial conditions of sewage
and garbage set up by Man on the sea-coast are responsible for the
prevalence of this parasite, and the weakly receptivity of the too
numerous sand-hoppers.
It is probable enough that, from time to time, under the influence
of certain changes of climate and associated fauna and flora--due
to meteoric or geologic movements--parasitic disease has for a time
ravaged this or that species newly exposed to it; but the final
result is one of the alternatives, extinction or adjustment, death
or toleration. The disease does not establish itself as a scourge
against which the diseased organism incessantly contends. It either
obliterates its victim or settles down with it into relations of
reciprocal toleration.
Man does not admit this alternative either for himself or for
the domesticated and cultivated organisms which he protects. He
‘treats’ disease, he staves off ‘the adjustment by death,’ and thus
accumulates vast populations of unadjusted human beings, animals and
plants, which from time to time are ravaged by disease--producing
uncertainty and dismay in human society. Within the past few years
the knowledge of the causes of disease has become so far advanced
that it is a matter of practical certainty that, by the unstinted
application of known methods of investigation and consequent
controlling action, all epidemic disease could be abolished within
a period so short as fifty years. It is merely a question of the
employment of the means at our command. Where there is one man of
first-rate intelligence employed in detecting the disease-producing
parasites, their special conditions of life and the way to bring
them to an end, there should be a thousand. It should be as much
the purpose of civilized governments to protect their citizens in
this respect as it is to provide defence against human aggression.
Yet it is the fact that this immensely important control of a
great and constant danger and injury to mankind is left to the
unorganized inquiries of a few enthusiasts. So little is this matter
understood or appreciated, that those who are responsible for the
welfare of States, with the rarest exceptions, do not even know that
such protection is possible, and others again are so far from an
intelligent view as to its importance, that they actually entertain
the opinion that it would be a good thing were there more disease in
order to get rid of the weakly surplus population!
In the spring of 1905 I was enabled to examine in the Pasteur
Institute in Paris, the minute spiral thread (see Fig. 6) which has
just been discovered and shown to be the cause of the most terrible
and widely spread of human diseases, destroying the health and
strength of those whom it does not kill and damaging the lives of
their children, so that it has been justly said that this malady and
the use of alcohol as a beverage are together responsible for more
than half the disease and early death of the mature population of
Europe. For more than thirty years, a few workers, here and there,
have been searching for this parasite, and the means of suppressing
the awful curse of which it is the instrument. It would have been
discovered many years ago had greater value been set on the inquiries
which lead to such discoveries by those who direct the public
expenditure of civilized States. And now the complete suppression
of this dire enemy of humanity is as plain and certain a piece of
work to be at once accomplished as is the building of an ironclad.
But it will not be done for many years because of the ignorance
and unbelief of those who alone can act for the community in such
matters. The discovery--the presentation to the eye and to exploring
manipulation--of that well-nigh ultra-microscopic germ of death,
seemed to me, as I gazed at its delicate shape, a thing of greater
significance to mankind than the emendation of a Greek text or the
determination of the exact degree of turpitude of a statesman of a
bygone age.
[Illustration: FIG. 6.
The minute vibratile organism discovered by Fritz Schaudinn in
1905 in the eruptive formations and other diseased growths of
syphilis--and called by him _Spirochæta pallida_ (since altered
to _Spironema pallidum_): _a_, common phase; _b_, shortened and
thickened form leading on to _e_ the Trypanosoma-like form; _c_,
_d_, stages of division by fission; _f_, elongated multi-nuclear
form; _g_, segments into which it breaks up; _h_, supposed
conjugation of male and female units (after Krystallovitch and
Siedlevski).
This organism, though resembling the spirillar forms of Bacteria,
is probably not one of that group of vegetable parasites, but
allied to the minute animal parasites known as Trypanosomes (see
pp. 145 and 181 and figures.) It is regarded as the ‘germ’ or
active cause of the terrible disease known as Syphilis.]
The knowledge of the causation of disease by bacterial and protozoic
parasites is a thing which has come into existence, under our very
eyes and hands, within the last fifty years. The parasite, and much
of its nature and history, has been discovered in the case of splenic
fever, leprosy, phthisis, diphtheria, typhoid fever, glanders,
cholera, plague, lock-jaw, gangrene, septic poisoning (of wounds),
puerperal fever, malaria, sleeping sickness, and some other diseases
which are fatal to man. In some cases the knowledge obtained has
led to a control of the attack or of the poisonous action of the
parasite. Antiseptic surgery, by defeating the poisonous parasite,
has saved not only thousands upon thousands of lives, but has removed
an incalculable amount of pain. Control is slowly being obtained in
regard to several others among these deadly microbes in various ways,
most wonderful of which is the development, under man’s control,
of serums containing antitoxins appropriate to each disease, which
have to be injected into the blood as the means of either cure or
protection. But why should we be content to wait long years, even
centuries, for this control, when we can have it in a few years? If
more men and abler men were employed to study and experiment on
this matter, we should soon make an end of all infectious disease.
Is there any one, man or woman, who would not wish to contribute
to the removal from human life of the suffering and uncertainty
due to disease, the anguish and misery caused by premature death?
Yet nothing is done by those who determine the expenditure of the
revenues of great States towards dealing adequately with this
matter.[11]
15. THE INCREASE OF HUMAN POPULATION.
Whilst there is a certainty of Man’s power to remove all disease
from his life, a difficulty which he has already created for himself
will be thereby increased. That difficulty is the increase of human
population beyond the capacity of the earth’s surface to provide food
and the other necessities of life. By rebelling against Nature’s
method, Man has made himself the only animal which constantly
increases in numbers. Whenever disease is controlled his increase
will be still more rapid than at present. At the same time no
attempt at present has been made by the more advanced communities of
civilized men to prevent the multiplication of the weakly or of those
liable to congenital disease. Already something like a panic on this
subject has appeared in this country. Inquiries have been conducted
by public authorities. But the only possible method of dealing with
this matter, and in the first place of estimating its importance
as immediate or remote, has not been applied. Man can only deal
with this difficulty created by his own departure from Nature--to
which he can never return--by thoroughly investigating the laws of
breeding and heredity, and proceeding to apply a control to human
multiplication based upon certain and indisputable knowledge.
It may be a century, or it may be more than five centuries, before
the matter would, if let alone, force itself upon a desperate
humanity, brutalized by over-crowding, and the struggle for food.
A return to Nature’s terrible selection of the fittest may, it is
conceivable, be in this way in store for us. But it is more probable
that humanity will submit, before that condition occurs, to a
restriction by the community in respect of the right to multiply,
with as good a grace as it has given up the right to murder and to
steal. In view of this Man must, in entering on his kingdom, at once
proceed to perfect those studies as to the transmission of qualities
by heredity which have as yet been only roughly carried out by
breeders of animals and horticulturists.
There is absolutely no provision for this study in any civilized
community, and no conception among the people or their leaders that
it is a matter which concerns any one but farmers.
16. AN UNTOUCHED SOURCE OF ENERGY.
The applications of steam and electricity have so far astonished and
gratified the rebel Man, that he is sometimes disposed to conclude
that he has come to the end of his power of relieving himself from
the use of his own muscles for anything but refined movements and
well-considered health-giving exercises. One of the greatest of
chemical discoverers at this time living, M. Berthelot, has, however,
recently pressed on our attention the question of the possibility
of tapping the central heat of the earth and making use of it as a
perennial source of energy. Many competent physicists have expressed
the opinion that the mechanical difficulties of such a boring, as
would be necessary, are insuperable. No one, however, would venture
to prophesy, in such a matter as this, that what is prevented by
insuperable obstacles to-day may not be within our powers in the
course of a few years.
17. SPECULATIONS AS TO THE MARTIANS.
Such audacious control of the resources of our planet is suggested
as a possibility, a legitimate hope and aim, by recent observations
and speculations as to our neighbour, the planet Mars. I do not
venture to express any opinion as to the interpretation of the
appearances revealed by the telescope on the surface of the planet
Mars, and indeed would take the most sceptical attitude until further
information is obtained. But the influence of these statements about
Mars on the imagination and hopes of Man seems to me to possess
considerable interest. The markings on the surface of the planet
Mars, which have been interpreted as a system of canals, have
been known and discussed for many years (see Figs. 7 and 8). It
has recently been observed that these canals undergo a recurrent
seasonal change of appearance consistent with the hypothesis that
they are periodically filled with water, which is derived from the
polar snow-caps of the planet at the season of greatest polar heat.
It is suggested that Mars is inhabited by an intelligent population,
not necessarily closely similar to mankind, but, on the contrary
unlike mankind in proportion as the conditions of Mars are unlike
those of the Earth, and that these inhabitants have constructed
by their own efforts the enormous irrigation works upon which the
fertility and habitability of their planet, at the present time,
depend. These speculations lead M. Faguet of the French Academy to
further reflections. The Martians who have carried out this vast
manipulation of a planet must be not only far in advance of the
inhabitants of the Earth in intelligence and mechanical power, as a
result of the greater age of their planet and the longer continuance
there of the evolution of an intelligent race, but such a vast work
and its maintenance would seem to imply a complete unanimity among
the Martians, a world-wide peace and common government. Since we
can imagine such a result of the prolonged play of forces in Mars,
similar to those at work in our own Earth, and even obtain some
slight confirmation of the supposition, may we not indulge in the
surmise that some such future is in store for Man, that he may be
able hereafter to deal with great planetary factors to his own
advantage, and not only draw heat from the bowels of the earth for
such purposes as are at present within his scope, but even so as to
regulate, at some distant day, the climates of the earth’s surface,
and the winds and the rain which seem now for ever beyond his control?
[Illustration: FIG. 7.
Drawing of Mars in November with Long. 156° on the meridian,
shewing the ‘Mare Sirenum’ (the shaded sickle-shaped area),
connected with a network of ‘canals’ shewing ‘spots’ or ‘oases’
at the intersections of the canals and a system of spherical
triangles as the form of the mesh-work.--_From_ ‘Mars,’ by
Perceval Lowell.]
[Illustration: FIG. 8.
Drawing of Mars as seen on November 18th, 1894 (Long. 325° on the
meridian) by Mr. Perceval Lowell at the Flagstaff Observatory,
Arizona, U.S.A., shewing ‘twin’ or ‘double’ canals, connected
northwards with the ‘Mare Icarium.’ The two figures here
reproduced only give a small portion of the system of canals,
oases and seas of the planet Mars, mapped by Mr. Lowell.]
18. THE INVESTIGATION OF THE HUMAN MIND.
In such a desultory survey as that on which I have ventured, of Man’s
kingdom and its dangers, it occurs to me to mention another area
upon which it seems urgent that the activities of nature-searchers
should be immediately turned with increased power and number. The
experimental study of his body and of that of animals has been
carried far and with valuable results by inquiring Man. But a
singularly small amount of attention has as yet been given to the
investigation of Man’s mind as a natural phenomenon and one which can
be better understood to the immense advantage of the race.
The mind of Man--it matters not for my immediate argument whether
it be regarded as having arisen normally or abnormally from the
mind of animals--is obviously the one and all-powerful instrument
with which he has contended, and is destined hereafter to contend,
against extra-human Nature. It is no less important for him to know
the quality, the capacity, the mode of operation of this instrument,
its beginnings and its limitations, than it is for him to know the
minutest details of the workings of Nature. Just as much in the
one case as in the other, it is impossible for him to trust to the
imperfect analysis made by ancient races of men and the traditions
and fancies handed down in old writings--produced by generations
who had not arrived at the method of investigation which we now
can apply. Experiment upon the mental processes of animals and of
Man is greatly needed. Only here and there has anything been done
in this direction. Most promising results have been obtained by
such observations as those on hypnotism and on various diseased and
abnormal states of the brain. But the subject is so little explored
that wild and untested assertions as to the powers of the mind are
current and have given rise to strange beliefs, accepted by many
seriously-intentioned men and women. We boldly operate upon the minds
of children in our systems of education without really knowing what
we are doing. We blindly assume that the owners of certain minds,
traditionally trained in amusing elegancies, are fit to govern
their fellow-men and administer vast provinces; we assume that the
discovery and comprehension of Nature’s processes must be the work
of very few and peculiar minds; that if we take care of the body the
mind will take care of itself. We know really nothing of the heredity
of mental qualities, nor how to estimate their presence or absence in
the young so as to develop the mind to greatest advantage. We know
the pain and the penalty of muscular fatigue, but we play with the
brains of young and old as though they were indestructible machinery.
What is called experimental psychology is only in its infancy, but
it is of urgent necessity that it should be systematically pursued
by the application of public funds in order that Man may know how
to make the best use of his only weapon in his struggle to control
Nature.
19. MAN’S DELAY: ITS CAUSE AND REMEDY.
Even the slight and rapid review just given of Man’s position, face
to face with Nature, enables us to see what a tremendous step he has
taken, what desperate conditions he has created by the wonderful
exercise of his will; how much he has done and can do to control the
order of Nature, and how urgent it is, beyond all that words can say,
for him to apply his whole strength and capacity to gaining further
control, so that he may accomplish his destiny and escape from misery.
It is obvious enough that Man is, at present, doing very little in
this direction; so little that one seeks for an explanation of his
apathy, his seeming paralysis.
The explanation is that the masses of the people, in civilized as
well as uncivilized countries, are not yet aware of the situation.
When knowledge on this matter reaches, as it inevitably will in time,
to the general population, it is certain that the democracy will
demand that those who expend the resources of the community, and
as government officials undertake the organization of the national
defence and other great public services for the common good, shall
put into practice the power of Nature-control which has been gained
by mankind, and shall exert every sinew to obtain more. To effect
this, the democracy will demand that those who carry on public
affairs shall not be persons solely acquainted with the elegant
fancies and stories of past ages, but shall be trained in the
acquisition of natural knowledge and keenly active in the skilful
application of Nature-control to the development of the well-being of
the community.
It would not be necessary to wait for this pressure from below were
the well-to-do class--which in most modern States exercises so
large an influence both in the actual administration of Governments
and by example--so situated as to be in any way aware of the
responsibilities which rest upon it. Traditional education has, owing
to causes which are not far to seek, deprived the well-to-do class
of a knowledge of, and interest in, Man’s relation to Nature, and
of his power to control natural processes. During the whole period
of the growth of man’s knowledge of Nature--that is to say, ever
since the days of Bruno--the education of the well-to-do has been
directed to the acquirement of entertaining information and elegant
accomplishments, whilst ‘useful knowledge’ has been despised and
obtained, when considered necessary, from lower-class ‘workmen’ at
workmen’s wages. It is of course not to be overlooked that there
have been notable exceptions to this, but they have been exceptions.
Even at the present day, in some civilized States, a body of clerks,
without any pretence to an education in the knowledge of Nature,
headed by gentlemen of title, equally ignorant, are entrusted with,
and handsomely paid and rewarded for, the superintendence of the
armies, the navies, the agriculture, the public works, the fisheries,
and even the public education of the State. When compelled to seek
the assistance of those who have been trained in the knowledge of
Nature (for even in these States there are a few such eccentric
persons to be found), the officials demand that such assistance
shall be freely given to them without pay, or else offer to buy the
knowledge required at the rate paid to a copying clerk.
This state of things is not one for which it is possible to blame
those who, in blissful ignorance, contentedly perform what they
consider to be their duty to their country. There are, however, in
many States, institutions, of vast influence in the education of
the whole community, known as Universities. In many countries they
as well as the schools are directly controlled by the State. In
England, however, we are happy in having free Universities, the older
of which, though in some important respects tied down by law, yet
have the power to determine almost absolutely, not only what shall be
studied within their own walls, but what shall be studied in all the
schools of the country frequented by the children of the well-to-do.
It is the pride of our ancient Universities that they are largely, if
not exclusively, frequented by young men of the class who are going
to take an active part in the public affairs of the country--either
as politicians and statesmen, as governors of remote colonies, or
as leaders of the great professions of the Church, the Law, and
Medicine. It would seem, then, that if these Universities attached a
greater, even a predominant, importance to the studies which lead to
the knowledge and control of Nature, the schools would follow their
example, and that the governing class of the country would become
acquainted with the urgent need for more knowledge of the kind, and
for the immediate application in public affairs of that knowledge
which exists.
It would seem that in Great Britain, at any rate, it would not be
necessary, were the Universities alive to the situation, to await
the pressure of democracy, but that a better and more rapid mode of
development would obtain; the influential and trusted leaders of
the community would set the example in seeking and using for the
good of the State the new knowledge of Nature. The world has seen
with admiration and astonishment the entire people of Japan follow
the example of its governing class in the almost sudden adoption
of the knowledge and control of Nature as the purpose of national
education and the guide of State administration. It is possible that
in a less rapid and startling manner our old Universities may, at no
distant date, influence the intellectual life of the more fortunate
of our fellow citizens, and consequently of the entire community.
The weariness which is so largely expressed at the present day in
regard to human effort--whether it be in the field of politics, of
literature, or of other art, or in relation to the improvement of
social organization and the individual life--is possibly due to the
fact that we have exhausted the old sources of inspiration, and have
not yet learnt to believe in the new. The ‘return to Nature,’ which
is sometimes vaguely put forward as a cure for the all-pervading
‘taedium’ of this age, is perhaps an imperfect expression of the
truth that it is time for civilized man not to return to the ‘state
of Nature,’ but to abandon his retrospective attitude and to take
up whole-heartedly the Kingdom of Nature which it is his destiny
to rule. New hope, new life will, when he does this, be infused
into every line of human activity: Art will acquire a new impulse,
and politics become real and interesting. To a community which
believes in the destiny of Man as the controller of Nature, and has
consciously entered upon its fulfilment, there can be none of the
weariness and even despair which comes from an exclusive worship
of the past. There can only be encouragement in every victory
gained, hope and the realization of hope. Even in the face of the
overwhelming opposition and incredulity which now unhappily have
the upper hand, the believer in the predestined triumph of Man over
Nature can exert himself to place a contribution, however small,
in the great edifice of Nature-knowledge, happy in the conviction
that his life has been worth living, has counted to the good in the
imperishable result.
20. THE INFLUENCE OF OXFORD.
If I venture now to consider more specifically the influence
exercised by the University of Oxford upon the welfare of the State
and of the human community in general, in view of the conclusions
which have been set forth in what has preceded, I beg to say that I
do so with the greatest respect to the opinions of others who differ
from me. When I say this I am not using an empty formula. I mean that
I believe that there must be many University men who are fair-minded
and disinterested, and have given special attention to the matter of
which I wish to speak, and who are yet very far from agreeing with
me. I ask them to consider what I have said, and what I have further
to say, in the same spirit as that in which I approach them.
It seems to me--and when I speak of myself I would point out that I
am presenting the opinions of a large number of educated men, and
that it will be better for me to avoid an egotistical attitude--it
seems to us (I prefer to say) that the University of Oxford by its
present action in regard to the choice and direction of subjects of
study is exercising an injurious influence upon the education of
the country, and especially upon the education of those who will
hereafter occupy positions of influence, and will largely determine
both the action of the State and the education and opinions of those
who will in turn succeed them. The question has been recently raised
as to whether the acquirement of a certain elementary knowledge of
the Greek language should be required of all those who desire to
pursue their studies in this University, and accordingly whether the
teaching of the elements of this language should form a prominent
feature in the great schools of this country. It seems to us that
this is only part of a much larger question; namely, whether it is
desirable to continue to make the study of two dead languages--and
of the story of the deeds of great men in the past--the main if
not the exclusive matter to which the minds of the youth of the
well-to-do class are directed by our schools and universities. We
have come to the conclusion that this form of education is a mistaken
and injurious one. We desire to make the chief subject of education
both in school and in college a knowledge of Nature as set forth in
the sciences which are spoken of as physics, chemistry, geology,
and biology. We think that all education[12] should consist in the
first place of this kind of knowledge, on account of its commanding
importance both to the individual and to the community. We think that
every man of even a moderate amount of education should have acquired
a sufficient knowledge of these subjects to enable him at any rate
to appreciate their value, and to take an interest in their progress
and application to human life. And we think further that the ablest
youths of the country should be encouraged to proceed to the extreme
limit of present knowledge in one or other branch of this knowledge
of Nature so as to become makers of new knowledge, and the possible
discoverers of enduring improvements in man’s control of Nature. No
one should be educated so as to be ignorant of the importance of
these things; and it should not be possible for the greatest talent
and mental power to be diverted to other fields of activity through
the fact that the necessary education and opportunity in the pursuit
of the knowledge of Nature are withheld. The strongest inducements in
the way of reward and consideration ought, we believe, to be placed
before a young man in the direction of Nature-knowledge rather than
in the direction of other and far less important subjects of study.
In fact, we should wish to see the classical and historical scheme
of education entirely abandoned, and its place taken by a scheme of
education in the knowledge of Nature.
At the same time let me hasten to say that few, if any of us--and
certainly not he who writes these lines--would wish to remove the
acquirement of the use of languages, the training in the knowledge
and perception of beauty in literary art, and the feeding of the
mind with the great stories of the past, from a high and necessary
position in every grade of education.
It is a sad and apparently inevitable accompaniment of all discussion
of this matter that those who advocate a great and leading position
for the knowledge of Nature in education are accused of desiring
to abolish all study of literature, history, and philosophy. This
is, in reality, so far from being the case that we should most
of us wish to see a serviceable knowledge of foreign languages,
and a real acquaintance with the beauties of English and other
literature, substituted for the present unsuccessful efforts to
teach effectively either the language or literature of the Greeks and
Romans.
It should not be for one moment supposed that those who attach the
vast importance which we do to the knowledge of Nature imagine that
Man’s spirit can be satisfied by exclusive occupation with that
knowledge. We know, as well as any, that Man does not live by bread
alone. Though the study of Nature is fitted to develop great mental
qualities--perseverance, honesty, judgement, and initiative--we
do not suppose that it completes Man’s mental equipment. Though
the knowledge of Nature calls upon, excites, and gratifies the
imagination to a degree and in a way which is peculiar to itself,
we do not suppose that it furnishes the opportunity for all forms
of mental activity. The great joys of Art, the delights and
entertainment to be derived from the romance and history of human
character, are not parts of it. They must never be neglected. But
are we not justified in asserting that, for some two hundred years
or more, these ‘entertainments’ have been pursued in the name of the
highest education and study to the exclusion of the far weightier
and more necessary knowledge of Nature? ‘This should ye have done,
and yet not left the other undone,’ may justly be said to those who
have conducted the education of our higher schools and universities
along the pleasant lines of literature and history, to the neglect
of the urgently-needed ‘improvement of Natural Knowledge.’ Nero was
probably a musician of taste and training, and it was artistic and
high-class music which he played while Rome was burning: so too the
studies of the past carried on at Oxford have been charming and full
of beauty, whilst England has lain, and lies, in mortal peril for
lack of knowledge of Nature.
It seems to be beyond dispute that the study, firstly of Latin,
and much more recently of Greek, were followed in our Universities
and in grammar schools, not as educational exercises in the use of
language, but as keys to unlock the store-rooms--the books--in which
the knowledge of the ancients was contained. So long as these keys
were needed, it was reasonable enough that every well-educated man
should spend such time as was necessary in providing himself with the
key. But now that the store-rooms are empty--now that their contents
have been appropriated and scattered far and wide--in all languages
of civilization, it seems to be merely an unreasoning continuation of
superannuated custom to go on with the provision of these keys. Such,
however, is the force of habit that it continues: new and ingenious
reasons for the practice are put forward, whilst its original object
is entirely forgotten.
In the first place, it has come to be regarded as a mark of good
breeding, and thus an end in itself, for a man to have some
first-hand acquaintance with Latin and Greek authors, even when he
knows no other literature. It is a fashion, like the wearing of a
court dress. This cannot be held to justify the employment of most of
the time and energy of youth in its acquirement.
A second reason which is now put forward for the practice is that
the effort and labour expended on the provision of these keys--even
though it is admitted that they are useless--are a wonderful and
incomparably fine exercise of the mind, fitting it for all sorts of
work. A theory of education has been enunciated which fits in with
this defence of the continued attempt to compel young men to acquire
a knowledge, however imperfect, of the Latin and Greek languages.
It is held that what is called ‘training the mind’ is the chief,
if not the only proper, aim of education; and it is declared that
the continuation of the study of those once useful, but now useless,
keys--Latin and Greek--is an all-sufficient training. If this
theory were in accordance with the facts, the conclusion in favour
of giving a very high place to the study so recommended would be
inevitable. But the facts do not support this theory. Clever youths
are taken and pressed into the study of Greek and Latin, and we are
asked to conclude that their cleverness is due to these studies. On
the other hand, we maintain that though the study of grammar may
be, when properly carried out, a valuable exercise, yet that it is
easily converted into a worthless one, and can never in any case take
the place of various other forms of mental training, such as the
observation of natural objects, the following out of experimental
demonstration of the qualities and relations of natural bodies, and
the devising and execution of experiment as the test of hypothesis.
Apart from ‘training’ there is the need for providing the mind with
information as well as method. The knowledge of Nature is eagerly
assimilated by young people, and no training in mental gymnastics can
be a substitute for it or an excuse for depriving the young of what
is of inestimable value and instinctively desired.
The prominence which is assigned to a familiarity with the details of
history, more especially of what may be called biographical history,
in the educational system favoured by Oxford, seems to depend on the
same causes as those which have led to the maintenance of the study
of Greek and Latin. To read history is a pleasant occupation which
has become a habit and tradition. At one time men believed that
history repeats itself, and it was thought to be a proper and useful
training for one who would take part in public affairs to store
his mind with precedents and picturesque narratives of prominent
statesmen and rulers in far-off days and distant lands. As a matter
of fact it cannot be shown that any statesman, or even the humblest
politician, has ever been guided to useful action by such knowledge.
History does not repeat itself, and the man who thinks that it does
will be led by his fragmentary knowledge of stories of the past into
serious blunders. To the fashionable journalist such biographical
history furnishes the seasoning for his essays on political questions
of the day. But this does not seem to be a sufficient reason for
assigning so prominent a place in University studies to this kind of
history as is at present the case. The reason, perhaps, of the favour
which it receives, is that it is one of the few subjects which a
man of purely classical education can pursue without commencing his
education in elementary matters afresh.
It would be a serious mistake[13] to suppose that those who would
give a complete supremacy to the study of Nature, in our educational
system, do not value and enjoy biographical history for what it is
worth as an entertainment; or further, that they do not set great
value upon the scientific study of the history of the struggles of
the races and nations of mankind, as a portion of the knowledge of
the evolution of Man, capable of giving conclusions of great value
when it has been further and more thoroughly treated as a department
of Anthropology. What seems to us undesirable is, that mere stories
and bald records of certain peoples should be put forward as matter
with which the minds of children and young men are to be occupied, to
the exclusion of the all-important matters comprised in the knowledge
of Nature.
There are, it is well known, not a few who regard the present
institution of Latin and Greek and so-called History, in the
pre-eminent place which they occupy in Oxford and the great schools
of the country, as something of so ancient and fundamental a
character that to question the wisdom of that institution seems an
odious proceeding, partaking of the nature of blasphemy. This state
of mind takes its origin in a common error, due to the fact that a
straightforward account of the studies pursued in the University
during the last five hundred years has never been written. Our
present curriculum is a mere mushroom growth of the last century,
and has no claim whatever to veneration. Greek was studied by but a
dozen or two specialists in Oxford two hundred and fifty years ago.
In those days, in proportion to what had been ascertained in that
subject and could be taught, there was a great and general interest
in the University in the knowledge of Nature, such as we should
gladly see revived at the present day. As a matter of fact, it is
only within the last hundred years that the dogma of compulsory
Greek, and the value of what is now called a classical education, has
been promulgated. These things are not historically of ancient date;
they are not essentials of Oxford. We are therefore well within our
right in questioning the wisdom of their continuance in so favoured a
position, and we are warranted in expressing the hope that those who
can change the policy of the University and Colleges in this matter
will, at no distant day, do so.
It is sometimes urged that Oxford should contentedly resign herself
to the overwhelming predominance given to the study of ancient
elegance and historic wisdom within her walls. It is said that
she may well be reserved for these delightful pursuits, whilst
newer institutions should do the hard work of aiding man in his
conquest of Nature. At first sight such a proposal has a tempting
character: we are charmed with the suggestion that our beautiful
Oxford should be enclosed by a ring fence and cut off for ever from
the contamination of the world. But a few moments’ reflection must
convince most of us that such a treatment of Oxford is an insult to
her and an impossibility. Oxford is not dead. Only a few decades have
passed--a mere fraction of her lifetime--since she was free from the
oppression of grammar-school studies, and sent forth Robert Boyle and
Christopher Wren to establish the New Philosophy of the Invisible
College in London. She seems, to some of us, to have been used not
quite wisely, perhaps not quite fairly, in the brief period which
has elapsed since that time. Why should she not shake herself free
again, and give, hereafter, most, if not the whole, of her wealth and
strength to the urgent work which is actually pursued in every other
University of the world as a chief aim and duty?
The fact that Oxford attracts the youth of the country to her,
and so determines the education offered in the great schools, is
a sufficient answer to those who wish to perpetuate the present
employment of her resources in the subvention and encouragement of
comparatively unimportant, though fascinating (even too fascinating),
studies, to the neglect of the pressing necessary knowledge of
Nature. Those who enjoy great influence in the affairs of the
University tell us with pride that Oxford not only determines what
our best schools shall teach, but has, as a main pre-occupation,
the education of statesmen, pro-consuls, leaders of the learned
professions, and members of parliament! Undoubtedly this claim is
well-founded, and its truth is the reason why we cannot be content
with the maintenance by the University of the compulsory study of
Greek and Latin, and the neglect to make the study of Nature an
integral and predominant part of every man’s education.
To return to my original contention--the knowledge and control of
Nature is Man’s destiny and his greatest need. To enable future
leaders of the community to comprehend this, to perceive what the
knowledge and control of Nature are, and what are the steps by which
they are gained and increased, is the duty of a great University. To
neglect this is to retard the approach of well-being and happiness,
and to injure humanity.
I beg, finally, for toleration from those who do not share my
opinions. I am well aware that they are open to the objection that
they partake more of the nature of dreams of the future than of
practical proposals.[14] That, perhaps, may be accepted as my excuse
for indulging in them. There are, and always have been, dreamers
in Oxford, and beautiful dreams they have dreamed--some of the
past, and some of the future. The most fascinating dreams are not,
unfortunately, always realized; but it is sometimes worth while to
tell one’s dream, for that may bring it a step nearer to ‘coming
true.’
APPENDIX.
_I add here a brief statement published by me in the_ TIMES, _May
17th, 1903, which touches on the question of the origin of life,
and certain theories of creation._
“It seems to me that, were the discussion excited by Lord Kelvin’s
statements to the Christian Association at University College allowed
to close in its present phase, the public would be misled and
injustice done both to Lord Kelvin and his critics. I therefore beg
you to allow me to point out what appear to me to be the significant
features of the matter under discussion.
“Lord Kelvin, whose eminence as a physicist gives a special interest
to his opinion upon any subject, made at University College, or in
his subsequent letter to you, the following statements:--
“1. That ‘fortuitous concourse of atoms’ is not an inappropriate
description of the formation of a crystal.
“2. That ‘fortuitous concourse of atoms’ is utterly absurd in respect
to the coming into existence, or the growth, or the continuation of
the molecular combinations presented in the bodies of living things.
“3. That, though inorganic phenomena do not do so, yet the
phenomena of such living things as a sprig of moss, a microbe, a
living animal--looked at and considered as matters of scientific
investigation--compel us to conclude that there is scientific reason
for believing in the existence of a creative and directive power.
“4. That modern biologists are coming once more to a firm acceptance
of something, and that is--a vital principle.
“In your article on the discussion which has followed these
statements you declare that this (the opinions I have quoted above)
is ‘a momentous conclusion,’ and that it is a vital point in the
relation of science to religion.
“I do not agree with that view of the matter, although I find Lord
Kelvin’s statements full of interest. So far as I have been able to
ascertain, after many years in which these matters have engaged my
attention, there is no relation, in the sense of a connection or
influence, between science and religion. There is, it is true, often
an antagonistic relation between exponents of science and exponents
of religion when the latter illegitimately misrepresent or deny
the conclusions of scientific research or try to prevent its being
carried on, or, again, when the former presume, by magnifying the
extremely limited conclusions of science, to deal in a destructive
spirit with the very existence of those beliefs and hopes which are
called ‘religion.’ Setting aside such excusable and purely personal
collisions between rival claimants for authority and power, it
appears to me that science proceeds on its path without any contact
with religion, and that religion has not, in its essential qualities,
anything to hope for, or to fear from, science.
“The whole order of nature, including living and lifeless
matter--from man to gas--is a network of mechanism the main features
and many details of which have been made more or less obvious to the
wondering intelligence of mankind by the labour and ingenuity of
scientific investigators. But no sane man has ever pretended, since
science became a definite body of doctrine, that we know or ever
can hope to know or conceive of the possibility of knowing, whence
this mechanism has come, why it is there, whither it is going, and
what there may or may not be beyond and beside it which our senses
are incapable of appreciating. These things are not ‘explained’ by
science, and never can be.
“Lord Kelvin speaks of a ‘fortuitous concourse of atoms,’ but I
must confess that I am quite unable to apprehend what he means by
that phrase in the connection in which he uses it. It seems to me
impossible that by ‘fortuitous’ he can mean something which is not
determined by natural cause and therefore is not part of the order
of nature. When an ordinary man speaks of a concourse having arisen
‘by chance’ or ‘fortuitously,’ he means merely that the determining
conditions which have led by natural causation to its occurrence were
not known to him beforehand; he does not mean to assert that it has
arisen without the operation of such determining conditions; and I
am quite unable to understand how it can be maintained that ‘the
concourse of atoms’ forming a crystal, or even a lump of mud, is in
any philosophic sense more correctly described as ‘fortuitous’ than
is the concourse of atoms which has given rise to a sprig of moss
or an animal. It would be a matter of real interest to many of your
readers if Lord Kelvin would explain more precisely what he means
by the distinction which he has, somewhat dogmatically, laid down
between the formation of a crystal as ‘fortuitous’ and the formation
of an organism as due to ‘creative and directive purpose.’
“I am not misrepresenting what Lord Kelvin has said on this subject
when I say that he seems to have formed the conception of a creator
who, first of all, without care or foresight, has produced what we
call ‘matter,’ with its necessary properties, and allowed it to
aggregate and crystallise as a painter might allow his pigments to
run and intermingle on his palette; and then, as a second effort, has
brought some of these elements together with ‘creative and directive
purpose,’ mixing them, as it were, with ‘a vital principle’ so as
to form living things, just as the painter might pick out certain
colours from his confused palette and paint a picture.
“This conception of the intermittent action of creative power and
purpose does not, I confess, commend itself to me. That, however,
is not so surprising as that it should be thought that this curious
conception of the action of creative power is of value to religion.
Whether the intermittent theory is a true or an erroneous conception
seems to me to have nothing to do with ‘religion’ in the large
sense of that word so often misused. It seems to me to be a kind
of mythology, and I should have thought could be of no special
assistance to teachers of Christianity. Such theories of divided
creative operations are traceable historically to polytheism.
“Lastly, with reference to Lord Kelvin’s statement that ‘modern
biologists are coming once more to a firm acceptance of
something--and that is “a vital principle.”’ I will not venture to
doubt that Lord Kelvin has such persons among his acquaintance.
On the other hand, I feel some confidence in stating that a more
extensive acquaintance with modern biologists would have led Lord
Kelvin to perceive that those whom he cites are but a trifling
percentage of the whole. I do not myself know of any one of admitted
leadership among modern biologists who is showing signs of ‘coming to
a belief in the existence of a vital principle.’
“Biologists were, not many years ago, so terribly hampered by these
hypothetical entities--‘vitality,’ ‘vital spirits,’ ‘anima animans,’
‘archetypes,’ ‘vis medicatrix,’ ‘providential artifice,’ and others
which I cannot now enumerate--that they are very shy of setting any
of them up again. Physicists, on the other hand, seem to have got
on very well with their problematic entities, their ‘atoms’ and
‘ether,’ and ‘the sorting demon of Maxwell.’ Hence, perhaps, Lord
Kelvin offers to us, with a light heart, the hypothesis of a ‘a vital
principle’ to smooth over some of our admitted difficulties. On the
other hand, we biologists, knowing the paralysing influence of such
hypotheses in the past, are as unwilling to have anything to do with
‘a vital principle,’ even though Lord Kelvin erroneously thinks
we are coming to it, as we are to accept other strange ‘entities’
pressed upon us by other physicists of a modern and singularly
adventurous type. Modern biologists (I am glad to be able to affirm)
do not accept the hypothesis of ‘telepathy’ advocated by Sir Oliver
Lodge, nor that of the intrusions of disembodied spirits pressed upon
them by others of the same school.
“We biologists take no stock in these mysterious entities. We think
it a more helpful method to be patient and to seek by observation of,
and experiment with, the phenomena of growth and development to trace
the evolution of life and of living things without the facile and
sterile hypothesis of ‘a vital principle.’ Similarly, we seek by the
study of cerebral disease to trace the genesis of the phenomena which
are supposed by some physicists who have strayed into biological
fields to justify them in announcing the ‘discovery’ of ‘telepathy’
and a belief in ghosts.”