Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays

T >> Thomas H. Huxley >> Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23

There is yet another direction in which Berkeley's philosophy, I will
not say agrees with Gautama's, but at any rate helps to make a
fundamental dogma of Buddhism intelligible.

"I find I can excite ideas in my mind at pleasure, and vary and shift
the scene as often as I think fit. It is no more than willing, and
straightway this or that idea arises in my fancy: and by the same
power [101] it is obliterated, and makes way for another. This making
and unmaking of ideas doth very properly denominate the mind active.
This much is certain and grounded on experience. . ." (Principles,
xxviii.)

A good many of us, I fancy, have reason to think that experience tells
them very much the contrary; and are painfully familiar with the
obsession of the mind by ideas which cannot be obliterated by any
effort of the will and steadily refuse to make way for others. But
what I desire to point out is that if Gautama was equally confident
that he could "make and unmake" ideas--then, since he had resolved
self into a group of ideal phantoms--the possibility of abolishing
self by volition naturally followed.

Note 9 (P. 68).

According to Buddhism, the relation of one life to the next is merely
that borne by the flame of one lamp to the flame of another lamp which
is set alight by it. To the "Arahat" or adept "no outward form, no
compound thing, no creature, no creator, no existence of any kind,
must appear to be other than a temporary collocation of its component
parts, fated inevitably to be dissolved."--(Rhys Davids, Hibbert
Lectures, p. 211.)

The self is nothing but a group of phenomena held together by the
desire of life; when that desire shall have ceased, "the Karma of that
particular chain of lives will cease to influence any longer any
distinct individual, and there will be no more birth; [102] for birth,
decay, and death, grief, lamentation, and despair will have come, so
far as regards that chain of lives, for ever to an end."

The state of mind of the Arahat in which the desire of life has ceased
is Nirvana. Dr. Oldenberg has very acutely and patiently considered
the various interpretations which have been attached to "Nirvana" in
the work to which I have referred (pp. 285 et seq.). The result of his
and other discussions of the question may I think be briefly stated
thus:

1. Logical deduction from the predicates attached to the term
"Nirvana" strips it of all reality, conceivability, or perceivability,
whether by Gods or men. For all practical purposes, therefore, it
comes to exactly the same thing as annihilation.

2. But it is not annihilation in the ordinary sense, inasmuch as it
could take place in the living Arahat or Buddha.

3. And, since, for the faithful Buddhist, that which was abolished in
the Arahat was the possibility of further pain, sorrow, or sin; and
that which was attained was perfect peace; his mind directed itself
exclusively to this joyful consummation, and personified the negation
of all conceivable existence and of all pain into a positive bliss.
This was all the more easy, as Gautama refused to give any dogmatic
definition of Nirvana. There is something analogous in the way in
which people commonly talk of the "happy release" of a man who has
been long suffering from mortal disease. According to their own views,
it must always be extremely doubtful whether the man will be any
happier after the "release" [103] than before. But they do not choose
to look at the matter in this light.

The popular notion that, with practical, if not metaphysical,
annihilation in view, Buddhism must needs be a sad and gloomy faith
seems to be inconsistent with fact; on the contrary, the prospect of
Nirvana fills the true believer, not merely with cheerfulness, but
with an ecstatic desire to reach it.

Note 10 (P. 68.)

The influence of the picture of the personal qualities of Gautama,
afforded by the legendary anecdotes which rapidly grew into a
biography of the Buddha; and by the birth stories, which coalesced
with the current folk-lore, and were intelligible to all the world,
doubtless played a great part. Further, although Gautama appears not
to have meddled with the caste system, he refused to recognize any
distinction, save that of perfection in the way of salvation, among
his followers; and by such teaching, no less than by the inculcation
of love and benevolence to all sentient beings, he practically
levelled every social, political, and racial barrier. A third
important condition was the organization of the Buddhists into
monastic communities for the stricter professors, while the laity were
permitted a wide indulgence in practice and were allowed to hope for
accommodation in some of the temporary abodes of bliss. With a few
hundred thousand years of immediate paradise in sight, the average man
could be content to shut his eyes to what might follow.

[104]

Note 11 (P. 69).

In ancient times it was the fashion, even among the Greeks themselves,
to derive all Greek wisdom from Eastern sources; not long ago it was
as generally denied that Greek philosophy had any connection, with
Oriental speculation; it seems probable, however, that the truth lies
between these extremes.

The Ionian intellectual movement does not stand alone. It is only one
of several sporadic indications of the working of some powerful mental
ferment over the whole of the area comprised between the Aegean and
Northern Hindostan during the eighth, seventh, and sixth centuries
before our era. In these three hundred years, prophetism attained its
apogee among the Semites of Palestine; Zoroasterism grew and became
the creed of a conquering race, the Iranic Aryans; Buddhism rose and
spread with marvellous rapidity among the Aryans of Hindostan; while
scientific naturalism took its rise among the Aryans of Ionia. It
would be difficult to find another three centuries which have given
birth to four events of equal importance. All the principal existing
religions of mankind have grown out of the first three: while the
fourth is the little spring, now swollen into the great stream of
positive science. So far as physical possibilities go, the prophet
Jeremiah and the oldest Ionian philosopher might have met and
conversed. If they had done so, they would probably have disagreed a
good deal; and it is interesting to reflect that their discussions
might have [105] embraced Questions which, at the present day, are
still hotly controverted.

The old Ionian philosophy, then, seems to be only one of many results
of a stirring of the moral and intellectual life of the Aryan and the
Semitic populations of Western Asia. The conditions of this general
awakening were doubtless manifold; but there is one which modern
research has brought into great prominence. This is the existence of
extremely ancient and highly advanced societies in the valleys of the
Euphrates and of the Nile.

It is now known that, more than a thousand--perhaps more than two
thousand--years before the sixth century B.C., civilization had
attained a relatively high pitch among the Babylonians and the
Egyptians. Not only had painting, sculpture, architecture, and the
industrial arts reached a remarkable development; but in Chaldaea, at
any rate, a vast amount of knowledge had been accumulated and
methodized, in the departments of grammar, mathematics, astronomy, and
natural history. Where such traces of the scientific spirit are
visible, naturalistic speculation is rarely far off, though, so far as
I know, no remains of an Accacian, or Egyptian, philosophy, properly
so called, have yet been recovered.

Geographically, Chaldaea occupied a central position among the oldest
seats of civilization. Commerce, largely aided by the intervention of
those colossal pedlars, the Phoenicians, had brought Chaldaea into
connection with all of them, for a thousand years before the epoch at
present under consideration. And in the ninth, eighth and seventh
[106] centuries, the Assyrian, the depositary of Chaldaean
civilization, as the Macedonian and the Roman, at a later date, were
the depositories of Greek culture, had added irresistible force to the
other agencies for the wide distribution of Chaldaean literature, art,
and science.

I confess that I find it difficult to imagine that the Greek
immigrant--who stood in somewhat the same relation to the Babylonians
and the Egyptians as the later Germanic barbarians to the Romans of
the Empire--should not have been immensely influenced by the new life
with which they became acquainted. But there is abundant direct
evidence of the magnitude of this influence in certain spheres. I
suppose it is not doubted that the Greek went to school with the
Oriental for his primary instruction in reading, writing, and
arithmetic; and that Semitic theology supplied him with some of his
mythological lore. Nor does there now seem to be any question about
the large indebtedness of Greek art to that of Chaldaea and that of
Egypt.

But the manner of that indebtedness is very instructive. The obligation
is clear, but its limits are no less definite. Nothing better
exemplifies the indomitable originality of the Greeks than the
relations of their art to that of the Orientals. Far from being
subdued into mere imitators by the technical excellence of their
teachers, they lost no time in bettering the instruction they
received, using their models as mere stepping stones on the way to
those unsurpassed and unsurpassable achievements which are all their
own. The shibboleth of Art is [107] the human figure. The ancient
Chaldaeans and Egyptians, like the modern Japanese, did wonders in the
representation of birds and quadrupeds; they even attained to
something more than respectability in human portraiture. But their
utmost efforts never brought them within range of the best Greek
embodiments of the grace of womanhood, or of the severer beauty of
manhood.

It is worth while to consider the probable effect upon the acute and
critical Greek mind of the conflict of ideas, social, political, and
theological, which arose out of the conditions of life in the Asiatic
colonies. The Ionian polities had passed through the whole gamut of
social and political changes, from patriarchal and occasionally
oppressive kingship to rowdy and still more burdensome mobship--no
doubt with infinitely eloquent and copious argumentation, on both
sides, at every stage of their progress towards that arbitrament of
force which settles most political questions. The marvellous
speculative faculty, latent in the Ionian, had come in contact with
Mesopotamian, Egyptian, Phoenician theologies and cosmogonies; with
the illuminati of Orphism and the fanatics and dreamers of the
Mysteries; possibly with Buddhism and Zoroasterism; possibly even with
Judaism. And it has been observed that the mutual contradictions of
antagonistic supernaturalisms are apt to play a large part among the
generative agencies of naturalism.

Thus, various external influences may have contributed to the rise of
philosophy among the Ionian Greeks of the sixth century. But the
assimilative [108] capacity of the Greek mind--its power of
Hellenizing whatever it touched--has here worked so effectually, that,
so far as I can learn, no indubitable traces of such extraneous
contributions are now allowed to exist by the most authoritative
historians of Philosophy. Nevertheless, I think it must be admitted
that the coincidences between the Heracleito-stoical doctrines and
those of the older Hindu philosophy are extremely remarkable. In both,
the cosmos pursues an eternal succession of cyclical changes. The
great year, answering to the Kalpa, covers an entire cycle from the
origin of the universe as a fluid to its dissolution in fire--"Humor
initium, ignis exitus mundi," as Seneca has it. In both systems, there
is immanent in the cosmos a source of energy, Brahma, or the Logos,
which works according to fixed laws. The individual soul is an efflux
of this world-spirit, and returns to it. Perfection is attainable only
by individual effort, through ascetic discipline, and is rather a
state of painlessness than of happiness; if indeed it can be said to
be a state of anything, save the negation of perturbing emotion. The
hatchment motto "In Coelo Quies" would serve both Hindu and Stoic; and
absolute quiet is not easily distinguishable from annihilation.

Zoroasterism, which, geographically, occupies a position intermediate
between Hellenism and Hinduism, agrees with the latter in recognizing
the essential evil of the cosmos; but differs from both in its
intensely anthropomorphic personification of the two antagonistic
principles, to the one of which it ascribes all the good; and, to the
other, all the evil.

[109] In fact, it assumes the existence of two worlds, one good and one
bad; the latter created by the evil power for the purpose of damaging
the former. The existing cosmos is a mere mixture of the two, and the
"last judgment" is a root-and-branch extirpation of the work of
Ahriman.

Note 12 (p. 69).

There is no snare in which the feet of a modern student of ancient lore
are more easily entangled, than that which is spread by the similarity
of the language of antiquity to modern modes of expression. I do not
presume to interpret the obscurest of Greek philosophers; all I wish
is to point out, that his words, in the sense accepted by competent
interpreters, fit modern ideas singularly well.

So far as the general theory of evolution goes there is no difficulty.
The aphorism about the river; the figure of the child playing on the
shore; the kingship and fatherhood of strife, seem decisive. The
[Greek phrase osod ano kato mie] expresses, with singular aptness, the
cyclical aspect of the one process of organic evolution in individual
plants and animals: yet it may be a question whether the Heracleitean
strife included any distinct conception of the struggle for existence.
Again, it is tempting to compare the part played by the Heracleitean
"fire" with that ascribed by the moderns to heat, or rather to that
cause of motion of which heat is one expression; and a little
ingenuity might find a foreshadowing of the doctrine of the
conservation of energy, in the saying [110] that all the things are
changed into fire and fire into all things, as gold into goods and
goods into gold.

Note 13 (p. 71).

Pope's lines in the Essay on Man(Ep. i. 267-8),

All are but parts of one stupendous whole,
Whose body Nature is, and God the soul,"

simply paraphrase Seneca's "quem in hoc mundo locum deus obtinet, hunc
in homine animus: quod est illic materia, id nobis corpus est."--(Ep.
lxv. 24); which again is a Latin version of the old Stoical doctrine,
[Greek phrase eis apan tou kosou meros diekei o nous, kataper aph emon
e psuche].

So far as the testimony for the universality of what ordinary people
call "evil" goes, there is nothing better than the writings of the
Stoics themselves. They might serve, as a storehouse for the epigrams
of the ultra-pessimists. Heracleitus (circa 500 B.C.) says just as
hard things about ordinary humanity as his disciples centuries later;
and there really seems no need to seek for the causes of this dark
view of life in the circumstances of the time of Alexander's
successors or of the early Emperors of Rome. To the man with an
ethical ideal, the world, including himself, will always seem full of
evil.

Note 14 (P. 73).

I use the well-known phrase, but decline responsibility for the libel
upon Epicurus, whose doctrines [111] were far less compatible with
existence in a style than those of the Cynics. If it were steadily
borne in mind that the conception of the "flesh" as the source of
evil, and the great saying "Initium est salutis notitia peccati," are
the property of Epicurus, fewer illusions about Epicureanism would
pass muster for accepted truth.

Note 15 (P. 75).

The Stoics said that man was a [Greek phrase zoon logikon politikon
philallelon], or a rational, a political, and an altruistic or
philanthropic animal. In their view, his higher nature tended to
develop in these three directions, as a plant tends to grow up into
its typical form. Since, without the introduction of any consideration
of pleasure or pain, whatever thwarted the realization of its type by
the plant might be said to be bad, and whatever helped it good; so
virtue, in the Stoical sense, as the conduct which tended to the
attainment of the rational, political, and philanthropic ideal, was
good in itself, and irrespectively of its emotional concomitants.

Man is an "animal sociale communi bono genitum." The safety of society
depends upon practical recognition of the fact. "Salva autem esse
societas nisi custodia et amore partium non possit," says Seneca. (De.
Ira, ii. 31.)

Note 16 (P. 75).

The importance of the physical doctrine of the Stoics lies in its
clear recognition of the universality [112] of the law of causation,
with its corollary, the order of nature: the exact form of that order
is an altogether secondary consideration.

Many ingenious persons now appear to consider that the incompatibility
of pantheism, of materialism, and of any doubt about the immortality
oxf the soul, with religion and morality, is to be held as an
axiomatic truth. I confess that I have a certain difficulty in
accepting this dogma. For the Stoics were notoriously materialists and
pantheists of the most extreme character; and while no strict Stoic
believed in the eternal duration of the individual soul, some even
denied its persistence after death. Yet it is equally certain that of
all gentile philosophies, Stoicism exhibits the highest ethical
development, is animated by the most religious spirit, and has exerted
the profoundest influence upon the moral and religious development not
merely of the best men among the Romans, but among the moderns down to
our own day.

Seneca was claimed as a Christian and placed among the saints by the
fathers of the early Christian Church; and the genuineness of a
correspondence between him and the apostle Paul has been hotly
maintained in our own time, by orthodox writers. That the letters, as
we possess them, are worthless forgeries is obvious; and writers as
wide apart as Baur and Lightfoot agree that the whole story is devoid
of foundation.

The dissertation of the late Bishop of Durham (Epistle to the
Philippians) is particularly worthy of study, apart from this
question, on account of [113] evidence which it supplies of the
numerous similarities of thought between Seneca and the writer of the
Pauline epistles. When it is remembered that the writer of the Acts
puts a quotation from Aratus, or Cleanthes, into the mouth of the
apostle; and that Tarsus was a great seat of philosophical and
especially stoical learning (Chrysippus himself was a native of the
adjacent town of Soli), there is no difficulty in understanding the
origin of these resemblances. See, on this subject, Sir Alexander
Grant's dissertation in his edition of The Ethics of Aristotle (where
there is an interesting reference to the stoical character of Bishop
Butler's ethics), the concluding pages of Dr. Weygoldt's instructive
little work Die Philosophie der Stoa, and Aubertin's Seneque et Saint
Paul.

It is surprising that a writer of Dr. Lightfoot's stamp should speak
of Stoicism as a philosophy of "despair." Surely, rather, it was a
philosophy of men who, having cast off all illusions, and the
childishness of despair among them, were minded to endure in patience
whatever conditions the cosmic process might create, so long as those
conditions were compatible with the progress towards virtue, which
alone, for them, conferred a worthy object on existence. There is no
note of despair in the stoical declaration that the perfected "wise
man" is the equal of Zeus in everything but the duration of his
existence. And, in my judgment, there is as little pride about it,
often as it serves for the text of discourses on stoical arrogance.
Grant the stoical postulate that there is no good except virtue; grant
that [114] the perfected wise man is altogether virtuous, in
consequence of being guided in all things by the reason, which is an
effluence of Zeus, and there seems no escape from the stoical
conclusion.

Note 17 (p. 76).

Our "Apathy" carries such a different set of connotations from its
Greek original that I have ventured on using the latter as a technical
term.

Note 18 (P. 77).

Many of the stoical philosophers recommended their disciples to take
an active share in public affairs; and in the Roman world, for several
centuries, the best public men were strongly inclined to Stoicism.
Nevertheless, the logical tendency of Stoicism seems to me to be
fulfilled only in such men as Diogenes and Epictetus.

Note 19 (P. 80).

"Criticisms on the Origin of Species," 1864. Collected Essays, vol. ii.
p. 91.[1894.]

Note 20 (P. 81).

Of course, strictly speaking, social life, and the ethical process in
virtue of which it advances towards perfection, Are part and parcel of
the general process of evolution, just as the gregarious habit of in
[115] numerable plants and animals, which has been of immense
advantage to them, is so. A hive of bees is an organic polity, a
society in which the part played by each member is determined by
organic necessities. Queens, workers, and drones are, so to speak,
castes, divided from one another by marked physical barriers. Among
birds and mammals, societies are formed, of which the bond in many
cases seems to be purely psychological; that is to say, it appears to
depend upon the liking of the individuals for one another's company.
The tendency of individuals to over self-assertion is kept down by
fighting. Even in these rudimentary forms of society, love and fear
come into play, and enforce a greater or less renunciation of
self-will. To this extent the general cosmic process begins to be
checked by a rudimentary ethical process, which is, strictly speaking,
part of the former, just as the "governor" in a steam-engine is part
of the mechanism of the engine.

Note 21 (p. 82).

See "Government: Anarchy or Regimentation," Collected Essays, vol. i.
pp. 413-418. It is this form of political philosophy to which I
conceive the epithet of "reasoned savagery" to be strictly
applicable.[1894.]

Note 22 (p. 83).

"L'homme n'est qu'un roseau, le plus faible de la nature, mais c'est
un roseau pensant. Il ne faut [116] pas que l'univers entier s'arme
pour l'ecraser. Une vapour, une goutte d'eau, suffit pour le tuer.
Mais quand l'univers l'ecraserait, l'homme serait encore plus noble
que ce qui le tue, parce qu'il sait qu'il muert; et l'avantage que
l'univers a sur lui, l'univers n'en sait rien."--Pensees de Pascal.

Note 23 (p. 85).

The use of the word "Nature" here may be criticised. Yet the
manifestation of the natural tendencies of men is so profoundly
modified by training that it is hardly too strong. Consider the
suppression of the sexual instinct between near relations.

Note 24 (p. 86).

A great proportion of poetry is addressed by the young to the young;
only the great masters of the art are capable of divining, or think it
worth while to enter into, the feelings of retrospective age. The two
great poets whom we have so lately lost, Tennyson and Browning, have
done this, each in his own inimitable way; the one in the Ulysses,
from which I have borrowed; the other in that wonderful fragment
"Childe Roland to the dark Tower came."

[147]

(Note: Section III came from a different source than the
other sections and thus does not have page numbers.)

III.

SCIENCE AND MORALS

[1886]

NATURAL SELECTION

NOT INCONSISTENT WITH

NATURAL THEOLOGY

(Atlantic Monthly for July, August, and October, 1860, reprinted in
1861)

I

Novelties are enticing to most people; to us they are simply annoying.
We cling to a long-accepted theory, just as we cling to an old suit of
clothes. A new theory, like a new pair of breeches (the Atlantic still
affects the older type of nether garment), is sure to have hard-fitting
places; or, even when no particular fault can be found with the
article, it oppresses with a sense of general discomfort. New notions
and new styles worry us, till we get well used to them, which is only
by slow degrees.

Wherefore, in Galileos time, we might have helped to proscribe, or to
burn--had he been stubborn enough to warrant cremation--even the great
pioneer of inductive research; although, when we had fairly recovered
our composure, and bad leisurely excogitated the matter, we might have
come to conclude that the new doctrine was better than the old one,
after all, at least for those who had nothing to unlearn.

Such being our habitual state of mind, it may well be believed that the
perusal of the new book "On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural
Selection" left an uncomfortable impression, in spite of its plausible
and winning ways. We were not wholly unprepared for it, as many of our
contemporaries seem to have been. The scientific reading in which we
indulge as a relaxation from severer studies had raised dim
forebodings. Investigations about the succession of species in time,
and their actual geographical distribution over the earths surface,
were leading up from all sides and in various ways to the question of
their origin. Now and then we encountered a sentence, like Prof. Owens
"axiom of the continuous operation of the ordained becoming of living
things," which haunted us like an apparition. For, dim as our
conception must needs be as to what such oracular and grandiloquent
phrases might really mean, we felt confident that they presaged no good
to old beliefs. Foreseeing, yet deprecating, the coming time of
trouble, we still hoped that, with some repairs and makeshifts, the old
views might last out our days. Apres nous le deluge. Still, not to lag
behind the rest of the world, we read the book in which the new theory
is promulgated. We took it up, like our neighbors, and, as was natural,
in a somewhat captious frame of mind.

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23