first statement of the law of natural selection. Darwin proved, in "The
Origin of the Species," that a great many more individuals of any given
species of living being are born into the world each year than can
possibly survive. Those that are best fitted to meet the condition of
existence live on; those that are worst fitted die. The result is that,
by the influence of heredity, the survivors beget a new generation in
which there is a larger percentage of the fit. One might think that
this would cause a greater number to survive, but inasmuch as the food
and room on earth are limited, a large number must always die. But
all the while the half or third, or whatever the percentage may be,
which actually do survive become more and more fit. In consequence, a
species, generation after generation, tends to become more and more
adapted to meet life's vicissitudes, or, as the biologists say, more
and more adapted to its environment.
Darwin proved that this law was true of all the lower animals and
showed that it was responsible for the evolution of the lower apes
into anthropoid apes, and that it could account, theoretically, for a
possible evolution of anthropoid apes into man. But in "The Descent
of Man" he argued that the law of natural selection ceased when man
became an intelligent being. Thereafter, he said, man's own efforts
worked against those of nature. Instead of letting the unfit of his
race die, civilization began to protect and preserve them. The result
was that nature's tendency to make all living beings more and more
sturdy was set aside by man's own conviction that mere sturdiness was
not the thing most to be desired. From this Darwin argued that if two
tribes of human beings lived side by side, and if, in one of them, the
unfit were permitted to perish, while in the other there were many
"courageous, sympathetic and faithful members, who were always ready to
warn each other of danger, and to aid and defend one another"--that in
such a case, the latter tribe would make the most progress, despite its
concerted effort to defy a law of nature.
Darwin's disciples agreed with him in this and some of them went to
the length of asserting that civilization, in its essence, was nothing
more or less than a successful defiance of this sort.[13] Herbert
Spencer was much troubled by the resultant confusion and as one critic
puts it,[14] the whole drift of his thought "appears to be inspired
by the question: how to evade and veil the logical consequence of
evolutionarism for human existence?" John Fiske, another Darwinian,
accepted the situation without such disquieting doubt. "When humanity
began to be evolved," he said, "an entirely new chapter in the history
of the universe was opened. Henceforth the life of the nascent soul
came to be first in importance and the bodily life became subordinated
to it."[15] Even Huxley believed that man would have to be excepted
from the operation of the law of natural selection. "The ethical
progress of society," he said, "depends, not on imitating the cosmic
process and still less on running away from it, but in combating it."
He saw that it was audacious thus to pit man against nature, but he
thought that man was sufficiently important to make such an attempt
and hoped "that the enterprise might meet with a certain measure of
success."[16] And the other Darwinians agreed with him.[17]
As all the best critics of philosophy have pointed out,[18] any
philosophical system which admits such a great contradiction fails
utterly to furnish workable standards of order in the universe, and so
falls short of achieving philosophy's first aim. We must either believe
with the scholastics that intelligence rules, or we must believe, with
Haeckel, that all things happen in obedience to invariable natural
laws. We cannot believe both. A great many men, toward the beginning
of the 90's, began to notice this fatal defect in Darwin's idea of
human progress. In 1891 one of them pointed out the conclusion toward
which it inevitably led.[19] If we admitted, he said, that humanity
had set at naught the law of natural selection, we must admit that
civilization was working against nature's efforts to preserve the race,
and that, in the end, humanity would perish. To put it more succinctly,
man might defy the law of natural selection as much as he pleased, but
he could never hope to set it aside. Soon or late, he would awaken to
the fact that he remained a mere animal, like the rabbit and the worm,
and that, if he permitted his body to degenerate into a thing entirely
lacking in strength and virility, not all the intelligence conceivable
could save him.
Nietzsche saw all this clearly as early as 1877.[20] He saw that what
passed for civilization, as represented by Christianity, was making
such an effort to defy and counteract the law of natural selection,
and he came to the conclusion that the result would be disaster.
Christianity, he said, ordered that the strong should give part of
their strength to the weak, and so tended to weaken the whole race.
Self-sacrifice, he said, was an open defiance of nature, and so were
all the other Christian virtues, in varying degree. He proposed, then,
that before it was too late, humanity should reject Christianity, as
the "greatest of all imaginable corruptions," and admit freely and
fully that the law of natural selection was universal and that the only
way to make real progress was to conform to it.
It may be asked here how Nietzsche accounted for the fact that humanity
had survived so long--for the fact that the majority of men were still
physically healthy and that the race, as a whole, was still fairly
vigorous. He answered this in two ways. First, he denied that the
race was maintaining to the full its old vigor. "The European of the
present," he said, "is far below the European of the Renaissance." It
would be absurd, he pointed out, to allege that the average German
of 1880 was as strong and as healthy--_i.e._ as well fitted to his
environment--as the "blond beast" who roamed the Saxon lowlands in
the days of the mammoth. It would be equally absurd to maintain that
the highest product of modern civilization--the town-dweller--was as
vigorous and as capable of becoming the father of healthy children as
the intelligent farmer, whose life was spent in approximate accordance
with all the more obvious laws of health.
Nietzsche's second answer was that humanity had escaped utter
degeneration and destruction because, despite its dominance as a
theory of action, few men actually practiced Christianity. It was
next to impossible, he said, to find a single man who, literally and
absolutely, obeyed the teachings of Christ.[21] There were plenty of
men who thought they were doing so, but all of them were yielding in
only a partial manner. Absolute Christianity meant absolute disregard
of self. It was obvious that a man who reached this state of mind
would be unable to follow any gainful occupation, and so would find
it impossible to preserve his own life or the lives of his children.
In brief, said Nietzsche, an actual and utter Christian would perish
today just as Christ perished, and so, in his own fate, would provide a
conclusive argument against Christianity.
Nietzsche pointed out further that everything which makes for the
preservation of the human race is diametrically opposed to the
Christian ideal. Thus Christianity becomes the foe of science. The one
argues that man should sit still and let God reign; the other that man
should battle against the tortures which fate inflicts upon him, and
try to overcome them and grow strong. Thus all science is unchristian,
because, in the last analysis, the whole purpose and effort of science
is to arm man against loss of energy and death, and thus make him
self-reliant and unmindful of any duty of propitiating the deity. That
this antagonism between Christianity and the search, for truth really
exists has been shown in a practical way time and again. Since the
beginning of the Christian era the church has been the bitter and
tireless enemy of all science, and this enmity has been due to the fact
that every member of the priest class has realized that the more a man
learned the more he came to depend upon his own efforts, and the less
he was given to asking help from above. In the ages of faith men prayed
to the saints when they were ill. Today they send for a doctor. In the
ages of faith battles were begun with supplications, and it was often
possible to witness the ridiculous spectacle of both sides praying to
the same God. Today every sane person knows that the victory goes to
the wisest generals and largest battalions.
Nietzsche thus showed, first, that Christianity (and all other ethical
systems having self-sacrifice as their basis) tended to oppose the law
of natural selection and so made the race weaker; and secondly, that
the majority of men, consciously or unconsciously, were aware of this,
and so made no effort to be absolute Christians. If Christianity were
to become universal, he said, and every man in the world were to follow
Christ's precepts to the letter in all the relations of daily life,
the race would die out in a generation. This being true--and it may
be observed in passing that no one has ever successfully controverted
it--there follows the converse: that the human race had best abandon
the idea of self-sacrifice altogether and submit itself to the law of
natural selection. If this is done, says Nietzsche, the result will
be a race of supermen--of proud, strong dionysians--of men who will
say "yes" to the world and will be ideally capable of meeting the
conditions under which life must exist on earth.
In his efforts to account for the origin of Christianity, Nietzsche
was less happy, and indeed came very near the border-line of the
ridiculous. The faith of modern Europe, he said, was the result of a
gigantic effort on the part of the ancient Jews to revenge themselves
upon their masters. The Jews were helpless and inefficient and thus
evolved a slave-morality. Naturally, as slaves, they hated their
masters, while realizing, all the while, the unmanliness of the ideals
they themselves had to hold to in order to survive. So they crucified
Christ, who voiced these same ideals, and the result was that the
outside world, which despised the Jews, accepted Christ as a martyr and
prophet and thus swallowed the Jewish ideals without realizing it. In a
word, the Jews detested the slave-morality which circumstances thrust
upon them, and got their revenge by foisting it, in a sugar-coated
pill, upon their masters.
It is obvious that this idea is sheer lunacy. That the Jews ever
realized the degenerating effect of their own slave-morality is
unlikely, and that they should take counsel together and plan such
an elaborate and complicated revenge, is impossible. The reader of
Nietzsche must expect to encounter such absurdities now and then.
The mad German was ordinarily a most logical and orderly thinker,
but sometimes the traditional German tendency to indulge in wild and
imbecile flights of speculation cropped up in him.
[1] _Vide_ the chapter on "Crime and Punishment."
[2] "_Der Antichrist_," § 62.
[3] St. Mark XIV, 63, 64.
[4] Albrecht Ritschl (1822-89), who is not to be confused with
Nietzsche's teacher at Bonn and Leipsic. Ritschl founded what is
called the Ritschlian movement in theology. This has for its object
the abandonment of supernaturalism and the defence of Christianity as
a mere scheme of living. It admits that the miracle stories are fables
and even concedes that Christ was not divine, but maintains that his
teachings represent the best wisdom of the human race. See Denny:
"Studies in Theology," New York, 1894.
[5] Ph. IV, 6: "Be careful for nothing; but in everything by prayer and
supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to
God."
[6] Deut. XXXII, 4: "He is the rock, his work is perfect." See also a
hundred similar passages in the Old and New Testaments.
[7] Isaiah XLIV, 8: "Now, O Lord, thou art our Father; we are the clay
and thou our potter; and we all are the work of thy hand."
[8] "The Constitution of the Presbyterian Church in the United States,"
pp. 16 to 20: Philadelphia, 1841.
[9] To the end of his days Huxley believed that, to the average human
being, even of the highest class, some sort of faith would always be
necessary. "My work in the London hospitals," he said, "taught me
that the preacher often does as much good as the doctor." It would be
interesting to show how this notion has been abandoned in recent years.
The trained nurse, who was unknown in Huxley's hospital days, now takes
the place of the confessor, and as Dr. Osler has shown us in "Science
and Immortality," men die just as comfortably as before.
[10] "_Der Antichrist_," § 5.
[11] "_Der Antichrist_," § 6.
[12] "_Der Antichrist_," § 7.
[13] Alfred Russell Wallace: "Darwinism," London, 1889.
[14] Alexander Tille, introduction to the Eng. tr. of "The Works of
Friedrich Nietzsche," vol. XI; New York, 1896.
[15] John Fiske: "The Destiny of Man;" London, 1884.
[16] Romanes Lecture on "Evolution and Ethics," 1893.
[17] As a matter of fact this dualism still lives. Thus it was lately
defended by a correspondent of the New York _Sun:_ "If there can be
such a thing as an essential difference there surely is one between the
animal evolution discovered by Darwin and the self-culture, progress
and spiritual aspiration of man." Many other writers on the subject
take the same position.
[18] See the article on "Monism" in the New International Encyclopedia.
[19] A. J. Balfour: "Fragment on Progress;" London, 1891.
[20] He was a monist, indeed, as early as 1873, at which time he had
apparently not yet noticed Darwin's notion that the human race could
successfully defy the law of natural selection. "The absence of any
cardinal distinction between man and beast," he said, "is a doctrine
which I consider true." ("_Unzeitgemässe Betrachtungen_," I, 189.)
Nevertheless, in a moment of sophistry, late in life, he undertook to
criticize the law of natural selection and even to deny its effects
(_vide_ "Roving Expeditions of an Inopportune Philosopher," § 14, in
"The Twilight of the Idols"). It is sufficient to say, in answer, that
the law itself is inassailable and that all of Nietzsche's work, saving
this single unaccountable paragraph, helps support it. His frequent
sneers at Darwin, in other places, need not be taken too seriously.
Everything English, toward the close of his life, excited his ire, but
the fact remains that he was a thorough Darwinian and that, without
Darwin's work, his own philosophy would have been impossible.
[21] This observation is as old as Montaigne, who said: "After all, the
stoics were actually stoical, but where in all Christendom will you
find a Christian?"
VII
TRUTH
At the bottom of all philosophy, of all science and of all thinking,
you will find the one all-inclusive question: How is man to tell truth
from error? The ignorant man solves this problem in a very simple
manner: he holds that whatever he believes, he _knows;_ and that
whatever he knows is true. This is the attitude of all amateur and
professional theologians, politicians and other numbskulls of that
sort. The pious old maid, for example, who believes in the doctrine of
the immaculate conception looks upon her faith as proof, and holds that
all who disagree with her will suffer torments in hell. Opposed to this
childish theory of knowledge is the chronic doubt of the educated man.
He sees daily evidence that many things held to be true by nine-tenths
of all men are, in reality, false, and he is thereby apt to acquire a
doubt of everything, including his own beliefs.
At different times in the history of man, various methods of solving
or evading the riddle have been proposed. In the age of faith it was
held that, by his own efforts alone, man was unable, even partly, to
distinguish between truth and error, but that he could always go for
enlightenment to an infallible encyclopedia: the word of god, as set
forth, through the instrumentality of inspired scribes, in the holy
scriptures. If these scriptures said that a certain proposition was
true, it _was_ true, and any man who doubted it was either a lunatic
or a criminal.[1] This doctrine prevailed in Europe for many years and
all who ventured to oppose it were in danger of being killed, but in
the course of time the number of doubters grew so large that it was
inconvenient or impossible to kill all of them, and so, in the end,
they had to be permitted to voice their doubts unharmed.
The first man of this new era to inflict any real damage upon the
ancient churchly idea of revealed wisdom was Nicolas of Cusa, a
cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church, who lived in the early part of
the fifteenth century.[2] Despite his office and his time, Nicolas was
an independent and intelligent man, and it became apparent to him,
after long reflection, that mere belief in a thing was by no means
a proof of its truth. Man, he decided was prone to err, but in the
worst of his errors, there was always some kernel of truth, else he
would revolt against it as inconceivable. Therefore, he decided, the
best thing for man to do was to hold all of his beliefs lightly and to
reject them whenever they began to appear as errors. The real danger,
he said, was not in making mistakes, but in clinging to them after they
were known to be mistakes.
It seems well nigh impossible that a man of Nicolas' age and training
should have reasoned so clearly, but the fact remains that he did, and
that all of modern philosophy is built upon the foundations he laid.
Since his time a great many other theories of knowledge have been put
forward, but all have worked, in a sort of circle, back to Nicolas.
It would be interesting, perhaps, to trace the course and history of
these variations and denials, but such an enterprise is beyond the
scope of the present inquiry. Nicolas by no means gave the world a
complete and wholly credible system of philosophy. Until the day of
his death scholasticism was dominant in the world that he knew, and
it retained its old hold upon human thought, in fact, for nearly two
hundred years thereafter. Not until Descartes, in 1619, made his famous
resolution "to take nothing for the truth without clear knowledge
that it is such," did humanity in general begin to realize, as Huxley
says, that there was sanctity in doubt. And even Descartes could not
shake himself free of the supernaturalism and other balderdash which
yet colored philosophy. He laid down, for all time, the emancipating
doctrine that "the profession of belief in propositions, of the truth
of which there is no sufficient evidence, is immoral"--a doctrine
that might well be called the Magna Charta of human thought[3]--but
it should not be forgotten that he also laid down other doctrines and
that many of them were visionary and silly. The philosophers after him
rid their minds of the old ideas but slowly and there were frequent
reversions to the ancient delusion that a man's mind is a function of
his soul--whatever that may be--and not of his body. It was common,
indeed, for a philosopher to set out with sane, debatable, conceivable
ideas--and then to go soaring into the idealistic clouds.[4] Only in
our own time have men come to understand that the ego, for all its
seeming independence, is nothing more than the sum of inherited race
experience--that a man's soul, his conscience and his attitude of
mind are things he has inherited from his ancestors, just as he has
inherited his two eyes, his ten toes and his firm belief in signs,
portents and immortality. Only in our own time have men ceased seeking
a golden key to all riddles, and sat themselves down to solve one
riddle at a time.
Those metaphysicians who fared farthest from the philosopher of Cusa
evolved the doctrine that, in themselves, things have no existence at
all, and that we can think of them only in terms of our impressions
of them. The color green, for example, may be nothing but a delusion,
for all we can possibly know of it is that, under certain conditions,
our optic nerves experience a sensation of greenness. Whether this
sensation of greenness is a mere figment of our imagination or the
reflection of an actual physical state, is something that we cannot
tell. It is impossible, in a word, to determine whether there are
actual things around us, which produce real impressions upon us, or
whether our idea of these things is the mere result of subjective
impressions or conditions. We know that a blow on the eyes may cause us
to see a flash of light which does not exist and that a nervous person
may feel the touch of hands and hear noises which are purely imaginary.
May it not be possible, also, that all other sensations have their rise
within us instead of without, and that in saying that objects give us
impressions we have been confusing cause and effect?
Such is the argument of those metaphysicians who doubt, not only the
accuracy of human knowledge, but also the very capacity of human beings
to acquire knowledge. It is apparent, on brief reflection, that this
attitude, while theoretically admissible, is entirely impracticable,
and that, as a matter of fact, it gives us no more substantial
basis for intelligent speculation than the old device of referring
all questions to revelation. To say that nothing exists save in the
imagination of living beings is to say that this imagination itself
does not exist. This, of course, is an absurdity, because every man
is absolutely certain that he himself is a real thing and that his
mind is a real thing, too, and capable of thought. In place of such
cob-web spinning, modern philosophers--driven to it, it may be said,
in parenthesis, by the scientists--have gone back to the doctrine
that, inasmuch as we can know nothing of anything save through the
impressions it makes upon us, these impressions must be accepted
provisionally as accurate, so long as they are evidently normal and
harmonize one with the other.
That is to say, our perceptions, corrected by our experience and our
common sense, must serve as guides for us, and we must seize every
opportunity to widen their range and increase their accuracy. For
millions of years they have been steadily augmenting our store of
knowledge. We know, for instance, that when fire touches us it causes
an impression which we call pain and that this impression is invariably
the same, and always leads to the same results, in all normal human
beings. Therefore, we accept it as an axiom that fire causes pain.
There are many other ideas that may be and have been established in the
same manner: by the fact that they are universal among sane men. But
there is also a multitude of things which produce different impressions
upon different men, and here we encounter the problem of determining
which of these impressions is right and which is wrong. One man,
observing the rising and setting of the sun, concludes that it is a
ball of fire revolving about the earth. Another man, in the face of
the same phenomena, concludes that the earth revolves around the sun.
How, then, are we to determine which of these men has drawn the proper
conclusion?
As a matter of fact, it is impossible in such a case, to come to any
decision which can be accepted as utterly and absolutely true. But
all the same the scientific empiric method enables us to push the
percentage of error nearer and nearer to the irreducible minimum. We
can observe the phenomenon under examination from a multitude of sides
and compare the impression it produces with the impressions produced
by kindred phenomena regarding which we know more. Again, we can put
this examination into the hands of men specially trained and fitted
for such work--men whose conclusions we know, by previous experience,
to be above the average of accuracy. And so, after a long time, we can
formulate some idea of the thing under inspection which violates few
or none of the other ideas held by us. When we have accomplished this,
we have come as near to the absolute truth as it is possible for human
beings to come.