The Forerunners Part 15

He summarises the history of the doctrine. We have the "fire" of Herac.l.i.tus, which for the sage of Ephesus was also the universal intelligence of the world. We have the same thing in the "pneuma" of the stoics and in the "pneuma agion" of the primitive Christians, the sacred energy, the vivifying force, which is the concentrated essence of all the souls. It is what Origen speaks of as "universum mundum velut animal quoddam immensum." We encounter the idea once more in the fertile fancies of Carda.n.u.s, Giordano Bruno, Paracelsus, and Campanella.

Animistic ideas are mingled with the science of Newton, and permeate his hypothesis of universal gravitation. Indeed, Musschenbroek, his immediate disciple, describes the gravitative principle as "amicitia"; while Lichtenberg tells us that it is the "longing of the heavenly bodies for one another!" In a word, through the whole development of human thought runs the belief that our world is a single organism with a consciousness of its own. Nicolai tells us how it would interest him to write the history of this idea; and he outlines that history in his fascinating fourteenth chapter, "The Evolution of the Idea of the World as Organism."[62]

He then pa.s.ses to scientific demonstration. Is there, he asks, a material bond, a bodily, living, and enduring tie, between human beings of all lands and all ages?[63] He finds a proof that there is such a bond in the researches of Weismann and in that writer's theory of the germ plasm, which has now become cla.s.sic.[64] In each individual, the cells of the germ plasm continue the life of the parents, of which, in the fullest sense of the word, they are living portions. They are undying. They pa.s.s, changeless, to our children and to our children's children. Thus there really persists throughout the whole genealogical tree a part of the same living substance. A portion of this organic unity lives in each individual and thereby we are physically connected with the universal community. Nicolai points out, in pa.s.sing, the remarkable relations.h.i.+ps between these scientific hypotheses of the last thirty years and certain mystical intuitions of the Greeks and the early Christians--"the spirit (pneuma) that quickeneth" (Saint John, vi, 63), the generative spirit, which is not only distinguished from the flesh, as Saint John declares, but is likewise distinguished from the soul, as appears from a pa.s.sage in Saint Paul's first epistle to the Corinthians (xv, 44), where the "spiritual body" (soma pneumatikon) is contrasted with the "natural body" (soma psuchikon). The spiritual body is declared to be more essential than the natural body (the psychical or intellectual body); and the former really and materially penetrates the bodies of all men.

Nor is this all. The studies made by contemporary biologists, and notably by the Russian biologist Janicki, on s.e.xual reproduction[65]

have explained how this method of reproduction safeguards the h.o.m.ogeneity of the germ plasm in an animal species, and how it unceasingly renews the mutual contacts among the individual members of a race. Janicki writes: "The world, if I may say so, has not been broken up into a ma.s.s of independent fragments, which then, for ever isolated one from another, ... must strike out for themselves on straight courses, with only side branches. On the contrary, owing to bi-s.e.xual reproduction (amphimixis), the image of the macrocosm is ... reflected as a microcosm in each part; and the macrocosm resolves itself into a thousand microcosms.... Thus the individuals, while remaining independent, are materially and continuously interconnected, like strawberry plants whose runners are joined together.... Each separate individual develops, as it were, through an invisible system of rhizomes (subterranean roots) which unite the germ substances of countless individualities."--Thus it has been calculated that in the twenty-first generation, in five hundred years let us say, and supposing an average of three children to each couple, the posterity of a single couple will be equal in number to the entire human race. It may, therefore, be said that each one of us has within him a small portion of the living substance belonging to every one of the human beings that were living five hundred years ago. Consequently it is absurd that anyone should wish to restrict an individual, be he whom he may, within the category of a separate nation or race.

Let us add that thought, too, propagates itself throughout mankind, in like manner with the germ plasm.

Every thought, once expressed, leads in the human community a life independent of its creator; undergoes development in other minds; and has, like the germ plasm, an immortal life. So that, in humanity, there is neither true birth nor true death, whether material or spiritual.

Empedocles, of old, realised this, for he said:

"Yet another truth will I tell unto thee. Not a mortal thing is truly born, and death the destroyer is not the end. There is nought but intermixture and exchange of what is intermixed. But among men it is customary to term this 'birth.'"

Humanity, therefore, materially and spiritually, is a single organism; all its parts are intimately connected and share in a common development.

Upon these ideas there must now be grafted the concept of mutation and the observations of Hugo de Vries.--If this living substance which is common to all humanity should, at any time and owing to any influence, have acquired the capacity for changing[66] after a certain lapse of time, for instance a thousand years, then all those beings which have in them a share of this substance may suddenly undergo identical changes.

It is well known that Hugo de Vries has observed such sudden variations in plants.[67] After centuries of stability in the characteristics of a species, quite suddenly, in a great number of individuals belonging to this species, there will one year occur a modification, the leaves becoming longer, or shorter, etc. Thenceforward this modification will be propagated as a constant feature, so that, by the following year, a new species will have come into existence.--The same thing happens among human beings, especially in the human brain; for, as far as man is concerned, the most striking instances of variation are found in the psychic domain. In each year, certain human beings present brain variations. Such abnormal individuals are sometimes regarded as madmen and sometimes as men of genius. They herald the coming variations of the species, variations of which they are the forerunners. At due date, the same peculiarities will suddenly manifest themselves throughout the species. Experience shows that transformations, or moral and social discoveries, appear at the same moment in the most widely separated and the most various countries. I have myself often been struck by this fact, both when studying history and when observing the men of my own day. Contemporary societies, at a great distance one from another and having no means of rapid intercommunication, will simultaneously exhibit the same moral and social phenomena. Hardly ever is a discovery born in the brain of a single inventor. At the same instant, other inventors happen upon it, antic.i.p.ate it, or are hot upon the trail. The popular phrase runs, "the idea is in the air." When an idea is in the air, a mutation is about to occur in the human brain. We are, says Nicolai, on the eve of a "mutation of war." Moltke and Tolstoi represent the two great contrasted variations in human thought. Moltke extolled the ethical value of war; Tolstoi pa.s.sed unqualified condemnation on war.

Which of these two minds represents the variation of genius and which the variation of madness? In the light of contemporary events, most people would be inclined to give the palm to Moltke. But when an organism is about to undergo mutation, the change is often preluded by frequent and extensive variations. Of these divergent variations, those only persist which are best suited to the conditions of existence. Thus, in Nicolai's view, the ideas of Moltke and his disciples are a favourable presage that mutation is imminent.

Whatever we may think of this hope that within the near future a mutation will occur leading to the formation of a humanity radically opposed to war, it is enough to watch the biological development of the extant world to acquire the belief that a new organisation, vaster and more peaceful, is at hand. In proportion as humanity evolves, communications between men are multiplied. During the last century there occurred a sudden and enormous improvement in the technical means for the exchange of ideas. To give one example only. In former days the circulation of letters throughout the whole world did not exceed one hundred thousand a year. To-day, the postal correspondence in Germany amounts to a milliard letters a year (15 per head), whereas formerly the number was 1 per 1,000 of the population. About forty years ago, in the countries which now form parts of the postal union, three milliards of letters, etc., were posted annually. By the year 1906 the number had increased to thirty-five milliards; and by 1914, to fifty milliards. (In Germany, 1 per head every 10 days; in Great Britain, 1 per head every 3 days.) We have further to consider the increased speed of communication.

Distance no longer exists for the telegraph; "the entire civilised world has become a large room in which we can all talk with one another."

Such changes cannot fail to influence social life. In earlier times, any thought of union or federation between the various states of Europe remained utopian, were it only on account of the difficulty and slowness of communications. As Nicolai says, a state cannot extend to infinite proportions; it must be able to act promptly upon the different parts of its organism. To a certain extent, therefore, its size is a function of the rapidity of communications. In prehistoric times, a traveller could cover only about 12 miles a day; when wheeled traffic became established, the daily postal journey extended to 60 miles, and in the later days of mail-coach development, this distance was more than doubled; towards 1850, the railway service was able to cover 375 miles a day; modern trains range to 1,250 miles a day; an express service covering 6,000 miles or more a day is already within the scope of technical possibilities. For barbarians, the country was limited to a mountain valley. The states that existed at the close of the middle ages, states which have not greatly varied down to our times, were adapted in size to the possibilities of the mail coach. Now, such petty states are far too small. The modern man will no longer consent to be restricted in this way. He is continually crossing frontiers. He wants vast states, like those of America, Australia, Russia, or South Africa.

We look forward to the days when, be it only for material reasons like the foregoing, the whole world will be a single state. Nothing that we can do will check this evolution; the change will come whether we like it or not. We can now understand that all earlier attempts to unite the nations of Europe, all those initiated in the middle ages and continued down to the nineteenth century, were rendered impossible of achievement by the lack of suitable material conditions. With the best will in the world, their realisation was impossible. But the requisite conditions exist to-day, and we may say that the organisation of contemporary Europe no longer corresponds to its biological development. w.i.l.l.y-nilly, Europe will have to adapt itself to the new conditions. The days of European unity have come. And the days of world-wide unity are at hand.[68]

The new body of humanity, the "corpus magnum" of which Seneca spoke, needs a soul, and it needs a new faith. This faith, while retaining the absolute character of the old religions, must be wider and more plastic than they; it must not merely be adapted to the existing needs of the human mind, but must take into account the possibilities of future development. All previous religions, rooted in tradition and wis.h.i.+ng to bind man to the past, were encased in dogmatism; and they one and all, as time pa.s.sed, became hindrances to natural evolution. Where can we find a basis for faith and morals which shall be simultaneously absolute and mutable; shall be above man, and none the less human; shall be ideal, and none the less real?--We shall find what we want, says Nicolai, in humanity itself. For us, humanity is a reality which develops throughout the ages, but which at every moment represents for us an absolute ent.i.ty. It evolves in a direction which may be fortuitous, but which, once taken, cannot be changed. It simultaneously embraces the past, the present, and the future. It is a unity in time, a vast synthesis of which we are but fragments. To be human, means to understand this development, to love it, to trust one's hopes to it, and to endeavour to partic.i.p.ate in it consciously. Herein we find an ethical system, which Nicolai sums up as follows:

1. The community of mankind is the divine upon earth, and is the foundation of morals.

2. To be a man is to feel within one's self the reality of humanity at large. It is to feel, like a living law, that we are elements of that greater organism, in which (to quote Saint Paul's admirable intuition) we are all parts of one body and every one members one of another.

3. The love of our neighbour is a feeling of good health. A general love for humanity is the feeling of organic health in humanity at large, reflected in one of its members. Therefore we should love and honour the human community and everything which sustains and fortifies it--work, truth, good and sound instincts.

4. Fight everything which injures it. Above all, fight bad traditions, instincts that have become useless or harmful.

"Scio et volo me esse hominem," writes Nicolai at the close of his book.

"I know that I am a man, and I wish to be one."

Man--he understands by this a being aware of the ties which attach him to the great human family, and aware of the evolution which carries him along with it--a spirit which understands and loves these ties and these laws, and which, submitting to them with delight, thereby becomes free and creative.[69] Man--the term applies to Nicolai himself in the sense of the character in Terence's play who said, "h.o.m.o sum; humani nihil a me alienum puto." Herein lies the great merit of his work; and herein, too, we find its defect. In his eagerness to include everything, he has attempted the impossible. He speaks in one place with an unjust contempt, and with a contempt which he above all should have been slow to express, of the "Vielwisser," the polyhistor.[70] But he himself is a Vielwisser, one of the finest specimens of this genus, too rare in our day. In all domains, art, science, history, religion, and politics, his insight is penetrating, but at the same time rapid and incisive.

Everywhere his opinions are lively, often original, and often debatable.

The wealth of his glimpses "de omni re scibili," the abundance of his intuitions and his reasonings, have a brilliant and at times a venturesome character. The historical chapters are not above reproach.

Unquestionably the lack of books accounts for certain insufficiencies, but I think the peculiarities of the author's own genius are partly responsible. He is headlong and impulsive. These qualities give charm to his writing, but they are dangerous. What he loves, he sees beautifully.

But woe to what he does not love! Take, for instance, his disdainful and hasty judgments upon the recent imaginative writers of Germany--judgments pa.s.sed wholesale.[71]

It is a remarkable fact that this German biologist resembles no one living or dead so much as he resembles one of our French encyclopedists of the eighteenth century. I know no one in contemporary France who can, to the same degree, be compared with him. Diderot and Dalembert would have opened their arms to this man of science, who humanises science, who boldly limns a picture instinct with life, a brilliant synthesis of the human mind, of its evolution, of its manifold activities, and of the results it has achieved; who throws wide the doors of his laboratory to intelligent men of the world; and who deliberately wishes to make of science an instrument of struggle and emanc.i.p.ation in the war of the nations on behalf of liberty. Like Dalembert and Diderot, he is "in the thick of the fight." He marches in the vanguard of modern thought, but he does not go further ahead than the due distance between a leader and his followers; he is never isolated, as were those great forerunners who remained throughout life cloistered in prophetic visions, centuries away from realisation; his ideals are no more than a day in advance of those cherished by his contemporaries.

A German republican, he looks no higher for the moment than the political ideals of Young America, the America of 1917, in which (according to Nicolai) "we can see, not merely what this new, so to speak, cosmopolitan, patriotism means, but also the limits which must still be imposed on it.... The day for the brotherhood of man has not yet come [we quote Nicolai, remember]; the time is not yet ripe. There is still too profound a cleavage between White, Yellow, and Black. It is in America that European patriotism has awakened, the sentiment which will undoubtedly be the patriotism of the near future, and whose heralds we would fain be.... The new Europe is already born, though not in Europe."[72]

In these lines we discern Nicolai's limitations, which any eighteenth century cosmopolitan would have over-stepped. In the practical domain, our author is essentially, uniquely, but absolutely, a European. It was to Europeans that he addressed his Manifesto of October, 1914, and his book of 1915.

"It seems to us necessary before everything else," he writes, "that there should be a union of all who are in any way attached to European civilisation, that is to say, who are what Goethe once almost prophetically called 'good Europeans.'" And in a note he adds: "By European civilisation I mean every endeavour, in the broadest sense of the word, throughout the world, the origin of which can ultimately be traced back to Europe."

Much might be said concerning this curtailment. For my own part, I consider it neither right nor useful that humanity should draw a line of demarcation between civilisation of European origin and the lofty civilisations of Asia. In my view, the harmonious realisation of humanity can be secured in no other way than by the union of these great complementary forces. Nay more; I believe that the European soul, unaided, impoverished and scorched by centuries of spendthrift existence, would be likely to flicker and even to go out, unless regenerated by an influx of the thought of other races.--But to each day its own task. Nicolai, at once thinker and man of action, turns to the most immediate duty. Concentrating all his energies upon a single aim, he accelerates the moment of attainment. "Just as certain of our forefathers, in advance of their time, enthusiastically advocated a united Germany, even so do we mean to fight for a united Europe. That is the hope inspiring this book."[73]--Nor does he merely hope for the victory of this cause. He already enjoys the victory, by antic.i.p.ation.

Immured in Graudenz fortress, near the room where Fritz Reuter, the German patriot, spent years in captivity because he believed in Germany, Nicolai notes that the Reuter room has been converted into a sanctuary by his erstwhile gaolers, "which is a living instance of the fact that reaction cannot endure for ever." His mind reverting to his own case, he declares: "We may be quite sure that the very same persons who to-day still continue to decry as high treason Goethe's conception of the citizen of Europe, will in a few years' time themselves subscribe to it."

This confidence radiates from every page of the book. It is Nicolai's faith in the future which influences us even more than the writer's ideas. That faith is a stimulant and a moral tonic. It awakens us and sets us free. Those of kindred spirit group themselves round him because, in the dark places of the earth where they wander chilled and with faltering steps, he is a focus of joy and fervid optimism. This prisoner, this man under sentence, smiles as he contemplates the force which thinks it has conquered him, the force of reaction let loose, and of unreason, overthrowing that which he knows to be right and true.

Precisely because his faith is violated, he desires to proclaim it.

"Precisely because war is in progress, I wish to write a book of peace."

Thinking of his brothers in the faith, weaker and more broken, he dedicates to them this book "to a.s.sure them that the war is but a pa.s.sing phase; that we must be careful not to attach too much importance to it." He speaks, he tells us, "to inspire fair-minded and right-thinking men with my own triumphant a.s.surance."[74]

May he be a model to us! May the small and persecuted band of those who refuse to share the general hatred, and whom therefore hate persecutes, be ever warmed by this inward joy! Nothing can deprive them of it.

Nothing can harm them. For, amid the horror and the shames of the present, they are the contemporaries of the future.

_October 15, 1917._

"demain," Geneva, November, 1917.

XXI

REFLECTIONS ON READING AUGUSTE FOREL

The name of Auguste Forel is renowned in the world of European science, but within the confines of his own land his writings are perhaps less well known than they should be. Every one is familiar with the social activities of this splendid personality, of this man whose indefatigable energies and ardent convictions have not been affected either by his age or by ill-health. But Latin Switzerland, which justly admires the writings of the naturalist J. H. Fabre, hardly seems to realise that in Forel it is fortunate enough to possess an observer of nature whose insight is no less keen than that of Fabre, and whose scientific endowments are perchance even richer and more unerring. I have recently been reading some of Auguste Forel's studies of ant life, and I have been profoundly impressed by the wide scope of his experimental researches, carried on for a whole lifetime.[75] While patiently observing and faithfully describing the life of these insects, day by day, hour by hour, and year after year, his thoughts have been simultaneously directed towards the ultimate recesses of nature, so that he has been able from time to time to raise for a moment a corner of that veil of mystery which covers our own instincts.

Here is a strange fact. J. H. Fabre believes in providence, "le bon Dieu"; Auguste Forel is a monist, a psycho-physicist. Nevertheless, Forel's observations suggest to the reader a conception of nature which is far less crus.h.i.+ng than that suggested by the observations of Fabre.

The latter, untroubled by anxieties concerning the human soul, sees in the little insects he is studying nothing more than marvellous machines.

But Forel discerns here and there sparks of reflective consciousness, germs of individual will. These are no more than widely separated luminous points, piercing the darkness. But the phenomenon is all the more impressive for its rarity. I have amused myself by selecting from out this wealth of observations a group of facts wherein are displayed the secular instincts, the "anagke," of the species--oppugned, shattered, vanquished. Wherefore should a combat of this sort be less dramatic when waged by these humble ants than when it is waged by the Atrides in _Orestes_? In all cases alike, we have the same waves of force, blind or conscious; the same interplay of light and shade. And the a.n.a.logy of certain social phenomena, as we observe them among these myriads of tiny beings, and as we observe them among ourselves, may help us to understand ourselves--and perhaps to achieve self-command.

I shall be content, here, to cull from the vast experimental repertory of Auguste Forel, those of his observations which bear upon certain psychopathological collective states, and those which bear upon the formidable problem which faces us to-day, the problem of war.

Ants, says Forel, are to other insects what man is to other mammals.

Their brain surpa.s.ses that of all other insects in its relative size and in the complexity of its structure. Even if they fail to attain the level of individual intelligence characteristic of the higher mammals, nevertheless they excel all animals without exception in the development of their social instincts. It is not surprising therefore, that in many respects their social life should resemble that of the human species.

Like the most advanced human communities, the ant societies are democracies, fighting democracies. Let us contemplate them at work.

The Ant State is not restricted to the single ant-hill; it has its territory, its domain, its colonies. Like our colonising powers, it has its ports of call, its revictualling stations. The territory is a single meadow, a few trees, or a hedge. The domain of exploitation consists of the ground and the subsoil, together with the aphis-bearing trees whence the ants take the aphides they keep under domestication. Their colonies are detached nests more or less distant from the metropolis and more or less numerous (there may be as many as two hundred), communicating with the primary nest by open roads or by underground pa.s.sages. The depots are small nests or dug-outs for the use of ants on long expeditions, ants that require a rest or those that are overtaken by bad weather.

Naturally these communities tend to grow, and they thus come into conflict one with another. "Territorial disputes, along the frontier between two great ant communities, are the usual cause of embittered struggles. The aphis-bearing shrubs are the most fiercely contested.

But, in the case of certain species, subterranean domains (the roots of plants) are likewise the region of savage warfare." Some species live solely by war and plunder. Polyergus rufescens (Huber's "amazon") disdains work, and has indeed lost the power. The members of this species live as slave-owners, served, tended, fed, by troops of slaves, the latter being recruited (in the larval or pupal stage) by slave raids upon neighbouring ant-hills.