and man, and punishable in the interests of both. Political and moral
obligations thus shaded together; some of the evils of the world being
punished by human agencies alone, some by divine, some by both. It must
be said, however, that throughout the whole progress of human
civilization the influence of moral obligations has been rising, while
the necessity for political laws has declined in like proportion. In
ancient times the penalties for crimes against the community were
terribly severe, while religion threatened those who offended the divine
powers with frightful future punishments. The necessity for such severe
restrictions has long been decreasing, and the more vividly it is felt
that immoral deeds or debased thoughts and purposes will be visited by a
spiritual retribution, the less necessity is there for laws and
penalties. Thus the limitation of human actions by government is growing
less necessary than of old, in conformity with the growing sense of
spiritual degradation in evil and of spiritual elevation in good deeds.
Mild laws have succeeded the severe edicts of the past, and with a
considerable section of the community restrictive laws have become
useless, conscience taking the place of law. In such men the impulse to
evil deeds dies unfulfilled, and the penalty for wrong-doing within
themselves may be more severe than that which the community would
inflict. In the souls of such men sits a spiritual tribunal by which
evil thoughts are tried and punished before they can develop into evil
acts.
This consideration of the development of the moral principles and dogmas
has been necessarily brief. In what direction it is leading must be
evident to all, and we can with assurance look forward to a condition of
human society in which conscience will have become a stronger element of
the intellect than now, the sense of moral obligation a more prevailing
sentiment, and legal restriction a less necessary governmental
requirement.
Of all the isms of the day altruism is far the noblest and most
promising. In this opponent of selfism, this regard for the rights and
happiness of others equally with our own, we find the link which binds
together the two halves of the moral principle. The love sentiment on
the one hand, the sense of duty on the other, meet and combine in the
zeal of altruism, for which a truly developed conscience is merely
another term. Those who have the good of others strongly at heart, who
are truly Christian in a practical realization of the brotherhood of
mankind, can safely be set free from all the reins of law, and trusted
to do the right thing from innate feeling instead of outside compulsion.
And, trusting in the future full development of the altruistic
sentiment, we can hopefully look forward to a time in which the moral
law will exist alone, conscience become the controlling force in human
actions, and government let fall the whip which it has so long held in
threat over the shrinking back of man.
XIII
MAN'S RELATION TO THE SPIRITUAL
The purpose of this work has been to trace the evolutionary origin of
man, in his ascent from the lower animal world to his full stature as
the physical and intellectual monarch of the kingdom of life. But to
round up the story of human evolution it seemed necessary to consider
man from the moral standpoint, and it now appears equally desirable to
review his relations to the spiritual element of the universe. Having
dealt with the development of man as a mortal being, we have now to
regard him as a possibly immortal being.
This outlook into the supreme domain of nature lifts us, for the first
time in our work, definitely above the lower world of life. There is
nothing to show that the animals below man have any conception of the
spiritual. It is true that there are various statements on record which
seem to indicate in some animals, the horse and the dog, for instance, a
dread of unseen powers, a recognition of some element in nature which is
invisible to the eyes of man. But what these facts indicate, what
influences affect the rudimentary intellect of these animals in such
instances, no one is able to say. Though some vague recognition of
powers or existences beyond the visible may arise in their narrow minds,
it does not probably pass beyond the level of instinct, and doubtless
lies almost infinitely below man's conception of the spiritual. In this
stage of intellectual development, then, we have to do with a condition
which seems to belong solely to man, or has but a germinal existence in
the lower organic kingdom.
In fact, primitive man may well have been as devoid of the conception of
a realm of spirit as was his anthropoid ancestor. The lowest savages of
to-day are almost, if not quite, lacking in such a conception, and are
destitute of anything that can fairly be called religion. Where apparent
religious ideas exist among them we cannot be sure to what extent they
have been infused by civilized visitors, or how far ardent missionaries,
in their anxiety to discover some trace of religion in savages, have
themselves inadvertently suggested the beliefs which they triumphantly
record. The Pygmies of Africa, the Negritos of Oceanica, and various
debased tribes elsewhere, may possibly be quite destitute of native
religious conceptions, at least of a higher grade than those which move
the horse and dog to a dread of the unseen. It should be borne in mind
that these tribes have for thousands of years been in some degree of
contact with more developed races and subject to educative influences,
and the crude religious conceptions which some travellers attribute to
them may well have been derived, not original.
Investigation in this field certainly gives us abundant warrant to
believe that primitive man, on whose mind no influences of education
could act, was destitute of religion, and that man's conception of the
unseen arose gradually, as one important phase of the development of his
intellect. Any attempt to trace the stages of this religious development
is far beyond our purpose, even if we were capable of doing it. It must
suffice to say that man everywhere, when he emerges into history as a
semicivilized being, is abundantly supplied with mythological and other
religious conceptions which indicate a long preceding evolution in this
field of thought.
For extended ages the realm of the unseen has been acting upon the mind
of man; filling him with dread of malevolent and reverence for
beneficent powers, inspiring him to acts of worship, peopling his
imagined heavens with imagined deities, and giving rise to an
extraordinary variety of deific tales and mythological ideas. The
literature of this subject would fill a library in itself, and is almost
abundant enough to supply one with reading for a lifetime. Yet it is
largely, if not wholly, ideal; it is in great part based on false
conceptions and misdirected imaginings; it rarely adduces evidence, and
such evidence as is offered is always questionable; in short, scientific
investigation and the critical pursuit of facts have taken no part in
the development of religious systems, and a deep cloud of doubt envelops
them all.
It is by no means our purpose to seek to throw discredit on any of the
great religions of the world. To say that they have been products of
evolution is not to invalidate them. Much that is true and solid has
arisen through evolution. To say that they lack scientific evidence is
not to question their validity. Many of the subjects with which they
deal lie beyond the reach of scientific evidence. Science has hitherto
dealt strictly with the physical; it has made almost no effort to test
the claims of the spiritual. In fact, the highest of these claims, that
of the existence of a deity, must lie forever beyond its reach. God may
exist, and science grope for Him through eternity in vain. Finite facts
can never gauge the infinite. Proofs and disproofs alike have been
offered of the existence of an infinite deity, but the problem remains
unsolved. None of these proofs or disproofs are positive; they all
depend on ideal conceptions, and ideas are always open to question;
positive facts on either side of the argument are, and are always likely
to be, wanting, and the belief in God must be based on other than
scientific grounds.
But when we come down to the lower levels of the domain of the spiritual
we find ourselves on firmer ground. Here we are dealing with the finite,
not with the infinite, and nothing that is finite can lie beyond the
boundaries of investigation, however long it may take to reach it. The
question of the existence of spirits, for instance,--that much mooted
problem of the immortality, or at least of the future existence, of man,
which forms so prominent an element in modern religion,--dwells within
the possible reach of science, and the attempt to deal with it by
scientific evidence may reasonably be made. When we pass beyond the
realm of the senses we find ourselves in a kingdom peopled by stupendous
forms and forces,--space, time, matter, energy, and perhaps infinite
consciousness,--all in their ultimate conditions too vast for the finite
mind to grasp, all presenting problems open to speculation, but beyond
the reach of demonstration. But below these lie finite possibilities
which the human mind may now be, or may become, capable of
comprehending, and prominent among these lies the problem just
mentioned, that of the existence of a spiritual substratum in man, a
soul which is capable of surviving the death of the body. This is a
subject with which all of us are deeply and intimately concerned, and it
may be well to close this volume with a brief glance at its status as a
scientific question.
The belief in the immortality of man is comparatively modern in origin.
There is no satisfactory evidence that any such belief existed among the
old Jews, or that it arose in Palestine before the time of Christ. It
arose at an earlier period in India and Persia, but everywhere it was
late in its appearance as a well-defined doctrine. Yet, while positive
evidence is wanting, there can be little doubt that crude and vaguely
formulated ideas of the existence of man after death have been very long
entertained. The traditions of all peoples that have a faith above that
of fetichism contain stories of the apparition of spirits of human
origin, and when we reach civilized peoples and more advanced religions
we find these in abundance. The annals of Christendom are full of them.
They are equally abundant in the centres of other developed forms of
faith. If we could accept these legends of the emergence of spirits
through the thin veil that separates time from eternity as established
facts, the problem would no longer need solution. As it stands, however,
the great mass of such narratives are utterly lacking in evidence of a
character which science can admit. They are bare, unsustained
statements, thousands of which would be far outweighed by a single one
fortified by demonstrated facts. Occasionally, indeed, the story of an
apparition has been closely investigated, and there are a few cases of
this kind handed down from the past which seem reasonably well
established. But any statement coming from prescientific days is open to
doubt; methods of investigation then were not what they are now; the
dogma of the existence of spirit is too important a one to be accepted
on any but incontrovertible evidence, and the vast sum of statements of
apparitions which have come to us from the past, or from the
non-scientific peoples of the present, must be dismissed with the one
verdict, not proven.
There is one important fact, however, connected with the question of
spiritual appearances, which is worthy of some consideration. It is a
fixed rule in the history of opinions that beliefs founded on
imagination or misconception have declined with the advance of
enlightenment, and many conceptions, once strongly entertained, have
faded and vanished in the light of new thought, or where retained have
been so only by the ignorant and unreasoning. It is of interest to find
that this has not been the case with the belief in spiritual
manifestations. This has held its own to the present time, and, while it
is largely sustained by the unintelligent and credulous, it can claim a
considerable body of intelligent adherents to-day, even in the most
enlightened nations. This belief, known as spiritism, with the
manifestations upon which it is founded, lies open, therefore, to modern
scientific investigation; and this has been, to some extent, applied to
it, with, in various instances, rather startling results.
It is certainly of significance to find that a number of prominent
scientists, thoroughly skilled in the arts of investigation, have
attacked this problem with the purpose of annihilating it, and have
ended in becoming convinced of the truth of spiritism. It may suffice
to mention two of the most striking instances of this. In the early days
of the spiritist propaganda, Robert Hare, a famous chemist of
Philadelphia, entered upon an investigation of the so-called spiritual
phenomena with the declared purpose of proving them to be fraudulent.
His observations were long continued, his tests varied and delicate, and
he ended by himself ardently adopting the belief he had set out to
abolish. Somewhat later William Crookes of London, an equally famous
chemist and physicist, entered upon a similar investigation, and with
like results. The tests applied by these men were strictly scientific,
and of the exhaustive character suggested by their long experience in
chemical investigation; and their conversion to the tenets of spiritism,
as a result of their experiments, was a marked triumph to the advocates
of the doctrine. Various others of admitted high intelligence, who made
a similar investigation and were similarly converted, might be named.
Two of the best known of these were Judge Edmonds, of the circuit court
of New York, and Alfred Russel Wallace of England, who shared with
Darwin the honor of originating the theory of natural selection.
While these, and others of scientific education, were converted to
spiritism, many investigators came to an opposite conclusion, while a
similar negative result was reached in the investigations of several
committees of scientists. The latest and most persistent attempt to
search into the reality of phenomena of this character has been that
made by the London Society for Psychical Research, whose investigations
have extended over years and have yielded numerous striking and
suggestive results. The most important conclusion at which the members
of this society have so far arrived is the hypothesis of Telepathy, or
the seeming power of one mind to influence the thoughts of another,
occasionally over long distances, in a method that appears analogous to
that of wireless telegraphy. The evidences in favor of this doctrine are
so numerous that it has been somewhat widely accepted, and the title
applied to it has come into general use. It indicates, if true,
remarkable powers in the mind of man, capabilities that seem far to
transcend those of the ordinary intellectual activities.
This is one side of the case. The other side now calls for presentation.
This is that the great body of scientists utterly reject the theory of
spiritism, and look upon its manifestations as due to fraud,
misconception, credulity, or some other of the weaknesses to which human
nature is liable. As regards the opinions arrived at by the prominent
scientists mentioned, these men are looked upon by their fellows of the
great scientific body as mentally warped, or as having allowed
themselves to be victimized by impostors. The fact that Professor
Crookes has continued one of the most acute and deep searching of
investigators into the phenomena of physics, and that his results in
this direction are accepted without question, and that Professor Wallace
is acknowledged to be one of the leading thinkers of the day, has not
sufficed to clear them of the doubt which rests upon their sanity or
their critical judgment in this particular, and the very attempt of any
one to investigate the so-called spiritual manifestations is widely
looked upon as an evidence of credulity or some greater mental weakness.
This result may seem singular, yet it is not without abundant warrant.
It must be borne in mind that the phenomena in question differ
essentially in character from those with which science is usually
concerned. The field of scientific investigation is distinctly the
material; the facts with which it deals are those apparent to the
senses, or which can be tested by material instruments; its discoveries
are generally susceptible of but one interpretation; its methods are
capable of being indefinitely repeated, and its results, if justly
interpreted, are unvarying in character. None of these postulates fully
applies to the spiritistic investigation. Here the conditions differ,
the results vary, the methods can rarely be exactly repeated, conscious
beings, instead of unconscious instruments, are the agents employed, and
the secret thoughts and purposes of such agents are very likely to
vitiate the result, and open a field of doubt which does not exist in
the investigation of the inorganic world.
This is one of the causes of the doubt of scientists. It is not the only
or the chief cause. The latter is the fact that the claims of spiritism
lift man into an entirely new domain of the universe, remove him from
the great field of the material with which he is physically affiliated
and to which his senses are closely adapted, and place him in a region
beyond the scope of the senses, a vast kingdom which is held to underlie
or subtend the physical, and which the ordinary outlook of the scientist
fails to perceive. It requires no strain of the imagination to admit the
existence of a new constituent of the atmosphere. It requires a great
strain to admit the existence of a new constituent of the universe, a
vast spiritual substratum to the domain of matter. Religion, with its
ideal tests, has long maintained this to be a fact. Science, with its
rigid material tests, sternly questions it, and demands that the
existence of an inhabited spiritual realm shall be incontestably proved
by scientific evidence before it can be accepted.
This demand is a reasonable one. The world is growing rapidly more
scientific, and the old method of arriving at conclusions is daily
losing strength. Beliefs based on ideal or imaginative postulates, once
strong, are now weak. Faith founded on ancient authority is active
still, but promises to become obsolete. The way of science is growing
to be the way of the world, and in the time to come intelligent men will
doubtless demand incontestable evidence of any fact which they are asked
to accept.
As regards the phenomena in question, however, it cannot be said that
they have been fairly or fully investigated by scientists. They have
been set down as the work of charlatans, and their apparent results
ascribed to fraud, collusion, credulity, and mental obliquity in
general. The fact, that of the scientists who have exhaustively
investigated the spiritistic phenomena, a considerable number have
accepted them as valid, has had no effect upon scientists as a body,
who, in this particular, occupy the position which they accuse
non-scientists of maintaining, that of forming opinions without
investigating phenomena.
This attitude of the scientific world toward these problematical
occurrences is quite comprehensible. Throughout the nineteenth century
the attention of scientists has been almost wholly directed toward the
investigation of the forms and forces of matter, the phenomena and
principles of the visible universe. In this they entered, at the opening
of the century, upon an almost virgin field, which they have wrought
with great diligence and with remarkable results. It is very possible,
however, that in the twentieth century no such undivided allegiance will
be given to the phenomena of matter, but that the attention of
scientists will be largely diverted from the physical to the psychical
field of investigation, which may prove to be a far broader and more
intricate domain than we now have any conception of.
Psychical phenomena have attracted some attention during the recent
century. One by one the problems of hypnotism, unconscious cerebration,
double consciousness, telepathy, spiritism, and the like, all at first
set down as unworthy of consideration, have forced themselves upon the
attention of observers, and each of them has been found to present
conditions amply worthy of investigation. This work has hitherto been
performed by occasional individuals, but the number of workers in
experimental psychics is steadily increasing, and their domain of
research broadening, and we may reasonably look forward to results
approaching, perhaps exceeding, in interest those reached in material
investigation.
There is a whole world before us, that of the mind and its phenomena,
fully equal in interest and importance to the world of matter, and
presenting as numerous and difficult problems. Hitherto it has largely
been dealt with from the ideal or metaphysical standpoint; only recently
has it been subjected to physical analysis, and already with striking
results. During the century before us it is likely to attract a wide and
active circle of investigators, with what results it is impossible to
predict. This is the only way in which the problem of the existence or
non-existence of a spiritual life can be solved to the satisfaction of
those of a scientific turn of mind, and this solution must be left to
the future to attain.
In the present work we are concerned with man's past rather than his
future. It is what man has come from, not what he is going to, that
forms the subject of our inquiries. We have been led into these remarks
simply as an outcome of a brief consideration of man's relations to the
spiritual element of the universe, and may close our work with the
suggestion that the problem of human evolution may be immensely greater
than that involved in the study of the ancestry of man.
THE DAWN OF REASON Or, Mental Traits in the Lower Animals
By JAMES WEIR, Jr., M.D.
_Author of "The Psychical Correlation of Religious Emotion and Sexual
Desire" etc._
16mo. Cloth. $1.25
* * * * *
Review of Reviews.
"This book presents evidences of mental action of the lower animals in a
clear, simple, and brief form. The author has avoided technicalities,
and has also resisted the temptation of the psychologist to indulge in
metaphysics. Dr. Weir has relied for evidence on the results of his own
independent study of biology at first hand, disregarding the second-hand
data used by many of the authors once regarded as standard authorities
in this department of research."
The Nation:
"The title raised in our mind some vague fears that we might find
physiology and psychology mixed up inexpertly with metaphysics; but we
see in the writer a close observer, who takes his stand on firm ground,
and goes into the objective world of animals for his facts."
* * * * *
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
66 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK
* * * * *
Transcriber's note
The following changes have been made to the text:
Page 133: "these forests dwarfs" changed to "these forest dwarfs".
Page 146: "adepts in the art of concealment" changed to "adept in the
art of concealment".