NATURE AND MAN.
The meaning of creation is not understood till dust stands erect in a living man. That a great purpose was present from the beginning, directing and controlling, there can be no doubt. It presided over the first nebulous mist that floated out to take form in the foundations of the earth. It measured and weighed the matter and force necessary to form the globe. It determined the elements required to do the work lying through the years before it. It assigned to them their laws, specific gravities and affinities, and appointed, beforehand, the combinations and collocations they were capable of making.
But not till the atoms throbbed in ahuman brain and beat in a human heart, did the purpose, which had through the ages run, stand out, defined and justified. Then it was that the intention underneath the drift of the ages spelled itself out in the unity of thought, the freedom of choice, and the capacity for love, potential in the intellect, will, and heart of the first man. He was the realization of an ideal, which gave meaning to the long periods of preparation. As the final expression of the creative process, he was at once the interpreter and the interpretation of all that had gone before.
Writers of a certain school have sought to minify man’s place in nature. They say, as Dr. Joseph Leconte well declares, that he is very closely connected with, and forms a most insignificant part of, nature—that hehas no kingdom of his own, but belongs to the animal kingdom; that in the animal kingdom he has no department of his own, but belongs to the department of the vertebrates—along with birds, reptiles, and fishes; that in the department of the vertebrates he has no privileged class of his own, but belongs to the class of the mammals, along with four-footed beasts; that in the class of mammals he has no titled order of his own, but belongs to the order of primates, along with monkeys and baboons. His conscience is but the resultant of fear and instinct, slowly deposited through the years of his evolution. Its imperiousness is self-constituted. Its scepter it has usurped, and, from the exhalations of its own rising cowardice, it has woven the purple robes which constitute the badge of its authority. His morality consists of rules imposed by his own prudence, and which have no sanctions beyond the opinions of his class or tribe.His religion is determined by the physical conditions which surround his life—his geographical situation, the nature and configuration of his soil, his climate, and his food. Thus man is simply a natural product, while the civilization which he has produced is as much determined by the physical conditions surrounding his life, as the leaves and dates of the palm are determined by the physical conditions surrounding that tropical tree. The hopes and the trials, the courage and the sacrifice of the best men, as well as the ambitions and motives of the worst, are put on a level with the damps and winds. The one class is entitled to no more credit for what is noble and heroic, than is rain for nourishing the crops; while the other deserves no more rebuke for what is base and ignoble, than the lightning for striking the Church and killing the people. The love which expresses itself in monuments to commemoratethe deeds of the good and the great, and the condemnation which lifts itself into jails to confine the criminal and the outlaw, have, in the last analysis, the same meaning. There is no sacred significance or obligations rooted in divine sanctions, in either the monuments or the jails. Both are but fickle phases of the passing spirit.
The convictions of Moses, reproducing themselves in the government, laws, literature, morality, and religion of a great people, conserving them through the ages as examples of order and health, have no more meaning than the sap which rises in some monarch of the forest, to express itself in leaves and fruit. The conceptions of duty, which nerved the heart and inspired the courage of the Apostle Paul, leading him to plant churches in Asia Minor, to become the seeds of modern civilization, were as completely natural as the rising of the waters of some mountain spring, to flowover silver sands to the sea. The music of Beethoven, the visions of Raphael, were but as the vapor in the light of the morning sun, beautiful, perhaps, as the rainbow, but going out with the setting day. Whatever of emotion or conscience they embodied, signified no more than the colors of the peach bloom, or the notes of the falling cascade. However esteemed the valor that risked life to break the reign of oppression and murder, it was but a varying form of the heartless ambition that sought in strength to make it prevail. The patriotism of Leonidas, giving up his life to save his country, and the insane act of Nero, swathing Christians in tar to light his feast, were forward and reverse movements of the same human spirit; both natural, and both as unmoral as the electricity that now strikes to destroy, and now burns the malaria to save. No difference is made between poison in the fangs ofsnakes, and mercy in the hearts of men.
Back of nature there is no purpose, and in its manifold combinations and adaptations there is no design. It is only a vast aggregate of unresting atoms, striking one upon another, and without intention and without purpose, forming pairs, clusters, and groups, and thus assuming the shapes we see. Why there happens to be order instead of chaos hangs on the uncertain turn of luck.
If there is mind in the universe, and if there is purpose in the order and movements of the earth, then man is the culmination of that purpose, and with reference to him was the order constituted and the movements determined. If there is naught but matter and force, and these exist without any directing or co-ordinating mind,then all things are without intention and without reason. There is nothing good or bad. Nothing is right or wrong. All things are reduced to a meaningless level of indifference. But matter and force bear witness to mind. Matter is here we know; and matter has not only form, extension, impenetrability, for its qualities, but indestructibility. Take the matter that enters into the composition of the earth. The amount of it is fixed and definite. It may be expressed in pounds weight. Since the beginning, not an atom has been added to it, or taken from it. Its presence here is to be accounted for. It either determined its own existence, and the exact amount, in pounds weight of that existence, or it was determined by some principle or power outside of itself, or within itself, called mind. If it determined itself to be, then it is intelligent, for self-determination and self-action are the essential characteristicsof mind. Then intelligence is retained by being transferred from something called mind to something called matter. But it has never been claimed that matter is intelligent. Then it is not self-active or self-determining, and waits on mind for its existence and its movements.
Matter as plainly bears testimony of the existence of mind, as to the existence of itself. It is easier to believe that the earth has taken the globular form and the circular motion by the determinations of mind, than to believe that through its own determinations it has assumed a circumference of twenty-five thousand miles, and the regular task of wheeling on its axis every twenty-four hours.
Not only is it impossible to account for the exact amount of matter making up the earth’s size and weight, without assuming the power of a co-ordinating, determining mind; but a still greater task is upon us,to account for the sixty odd original elements, out of which all things in nature are formed without mind. These elements differ in quantity, quality, specific gravity, and affinity. What determined their number, their tendencies, and affinities? Why something more than sixty; no more, no less? Why so much of some, so little of others? We must either conclude that they determined themselves—that they held a convention before they existed, and resolved upon taking form and motion, or else we must believe that they were determined by some power, other than themselves—by mind. If by their own motion, oxygen, and iron, and gold are what they are; then the elements have the power of self-action and self-determination, and are therefore intelligent.
The collocations these elements form are more difficult still to be accounted forwithout the agency of mind. Figures piled up to the sun are not able to express the possible combinations they are capable of assuming. The possible combinations of even twenty-four letters of the alphabet could not be expressed in literature, filling the world with books. Much greater must be the number of combinations of the original elements—the alphabet of creation. It is to be remembered, too, that they disagree on more of their sides than they agree. They are by no means equally congenial. Friendships and unions between them are formed in accordance with the most exact rule and affinity. Does it not seem, then, that combinations formed by chance would be mutually incompatible, neutralizing, and destructive? Would they not forever ferment in ungoverned chaos? Yet we see them dwelling together in the utmost unity, like seeking like, and in the bonds of law andharmony, uniting in compound, mineral, vegetable, animal, and the body of man himself.
Were there as many of the lettera, as there are atoms of oxygen; and as many of the letterb, as there are atoms of hydrogen; and were the letters of the alphabet to be increased in proportion to their use, until they should equal the atoms of all the elements which enter into the composition of the globe; how long would it take these letters, stirred by some force like the winds, to assume the form of such a poem as Paradise Lost? We cannot believe that all these letters, stirred by an unseen force through infinite ages, would ever form a sensible verse of poetry, or a rational verse of prose. It is as difficult to understand how the letters of the alphabet could ever get into the rhythm of Paradise Lost, without Milton’s mind, as to understand how unconscious elements took the form ofmountain, sea, grove, and globe; round, articulate, and law abiding, without a great co-ordinating mind.
The physical forces and energies bear indubitable testimony to the existence of mind, not only outside of themselves, but in themselves and through themselves. We have the force of gravitation, the power which bodies have of attracting one another in proportion to their mass, and inversely as the squares of their distance; in other words, that power which bodies have of getting up mutually aggregative motion, unless prevented by some other power of an opposite nature. A body suspended in the air is attracted toward the earth by the force of gravitation. A lump of sugar held over a cup of tea, attracts into itself the water of the tea cup. This is done by the force known as capillarity. A piece of iron left exposed attracts the particles of oxygen in theatmosphere. This is done by the force known as chemical affinity. Why do bodies attract one another in proportion to their mass and inversely as the squares of their distance? Why does a lump of sugar, held close over a cup of water, attract the particles of water into itself? Why does a piece of iron in the atmosphere attract to itself the oxygen? We are told it is because of gravitation, capillarity, and chemical affinity. How happens it that these forces have methods of action known as gravitation, capillarity, and chemical affinity? They either determined themselves to have them and to act in accordance with them, or else some power other than themselves determined these methods of action for them.
The truth is, gravitation, capillarity, and chemical affinity are but terms we use to define the operations of mind. To name a force and to find the formula in accordancewith which it works, is not to determine the origin of its source. And because we have, by observation and experiment, found out the methods and the measures of the mind’s working, is no good reason why we should read mind out of the process altogether. This is to mistake names for causes; and to suppose when one learns how a force acts, that he has also learned what it is that acts.
A contemporary of Shakspere might have observed the poet so closely in his home at Stratford-upon-Avon, as to be able to give to the world a detailed and exact account of his habits of thought and hours of study; but this would not have kept the intelligent part of mankind from believing that a great mind had embodied itself in the immortal plays of Shakspere.
Heat, electricity, light, and magnetism must also be expressions of mind, for thesame reason that matter is an expression of mind. To believe them self-determined, is to believe them rational and intelligent. This has never been claimed, hence our only way of accounting for their existence is to regard them as the determinations of mind. We see them, day by day, lending themselves to the uses and devices of man’s thought, and expressions of thought they must be.
This whole subject resolves itself into the question, Which is fundamental and prior, mind or matter? If mind is fundamental and prior, then there is design, intention, and purpose in nature. If matter is first and fundamental, there is no such thing as design, intention, or purpose anywhere. If mind is first and fundamental, then man is the end and aim of creation, for in him themind that formed the earth finds a companion and an interpreter. If matter is first and fundamental, then the earth is as much for crocodiles and wolves, as for men, and the life of a human being is no better than that of a lizard. If matter is fundamental, it were better to be a crocodile or an elephant than to be a man, for they have more of the fundamental stuff of the universe in their bodies; and their brains generate none of that subtle something calledmind, which perpetually asks questions that have no answer, and cherishes beliefs that have no foundation. If matter is fundamental, then we should trust our faculties, in proportion as they are animal, and deny them in proportion as they are mental. Then the Neros and the Caligulas were more rational in their sins, than the Luthers and the Wesleys in their virtues. By following their lusts, the former found pleasure, of a low order of course, but inthe realm of the real; the latter, following their convictions, found pleasure, of a higher order it may be, but it was in a false and unreal domain. It were better to be true to the facts on the plain of the appetites, than to be the silly victims of fraud on the plain of the conscience and the affections. But it is impossible that men have been true as they have been degraded, and false as they have been pure. The design and purpose which has been apparent in nature, and which men have felt in conscience approving the right and condemning the wrong, must be there. To eliminate them, or to reason them away, is to bring mental confusion, and to take from the conviction and thought, which have made civilization, the principles on which they reposed, and by which they were inspired.
Man has no deeper and surer impression than that the world belongs to him and was made for him. It is deepened year by year, too, as he sees the relations he sustains to it increase. No more certainly are the walls, roof, and floor of a house related to the comfort and protection of the family, than are the elements, forces, and seasons of nature related to the well-being and civilization of man. Mountain and sky, meadow and forest, the past and the present are permeated with the thought, or idea, of man, whether in the first stages of progress, keeping beasts at bay with sling or stone, or at a more advanced period, tunneling the rivers and digging down the mountains. Young or old, child or man, nature stands ready to serve him. Water from her skies flows through his veins to and from his beatingheart. Trees and shrubs and herbs minister to his pleasure and his ills. Rocks, and timber, and steel lend themselves to his service for house, hatchet, or chisel. When he ascends sufficiently in the grade of civilization to give expression to his conceptions of beauty, he finds the colors in the ores under his feet to embody his visions. Would he illuminate his humble home at night, there is the pine with its light-giving tar. Does he live amid the plains, where the pine does not grow, there is the ox with his tallow ready to be made into candles. Does he live on the coast, away from the ox or the pine, there is the whale with his oil. Does he want a better light than pine, or tallow, or oil can give, there are the coal beds, with their sunshine laid up for his use for thousands of ages. Does he wish to turn night into day, and make his streets glow with the radiance of the stars, there is electricity to be drawn fromits wide, mysterious fields, to serve his growing desire. Would he cross the sea, the winds lie ready to fill his canvas and draw him from continent to continent. Are the winds too slow, there is the heat, stored in the mountains, ready to move his engine and drive his wheel. Does he wish to make himself ubiquitous, and send a message across the sea, before a ship could get out of port, there waits on him again the mysterious lightning.
Nature teems with elements and forces to wait on man’s every thought, to gratify his every desire, and to respond to his every aspiration. With all her wealth she surrounds him, and in ten thousand ways invites him to use it. The naturalist Guyot said the hand of man prefigures his destiny as an intelligent worker. So the form of all continents and islands, the outlines of all seas and coasts, contain the idea of the human family. At a time,geologically about the same, the surface conditions of the earth were prepared for the advent of man. The great Himalaya Mountain range was lifted up to prepare an embosoming plain to serve as a cradle for the human race. The long chain of mountains running through the whole length of the North and South American continents was raised to prepare the way for civilization on this side of the sea. When the ocean beds were dug out and the waters called off from a part of the earth’s surface; when the mighty peaks and the majestic turrets of the mountain chains were lifted into the sky; when the encompassing atmosphere was filled with all life-replenishing elements and wrapped about all oceans and shores; when the poisonous forces destructive of man’s life were locked up in soils and rocks; when the meadows were sown with grasses, and the hospitable arms of the trees wereloaded with fruit, then, upon the earth, adorned and ready for his coming, man appeared.
Considered as an embodiment of thought, man is the only creature who can interpret Nature. The ideas and principles that fill his great books were gathered from a study of her secrets and processes. The first books on geology, giving the history of the earth, its upheavals, changes, and transformations, were written in the rocks, sands, coal-beds, and shells of the primal ages. The first books on chemistry were written in the shape, sizes, affinities, and specific gravities of the atoms which enter into the composition of all natural bodies. The first books on arithmetic, by the knowledge of which man learns to divide and conquer nature, were written in the qualitative relations and movements ofmatter. The first books on astronomy were written in the orbits and movements of the heavenly bodies. The first books on zoölogy were written in the structure and habits of the lower animals. The books that fill our libraries are but transcripts from the original volumes written in rocks, seas, flowers, and skies. Man is the only being who can read and transcribe these wonderful volumes. They lie unopened and unknown till his interest is provoked. Their language carries no meaning till he comes to find it and to ponder it. The herds that low amid the Alpine echoes see, as well as the distinguished Tyndall, the great glaciers, as they press with slow and measured pace down the mountain side; but their meaning, and the law by which they move, is not known till the man of science comes. To him, they speak in awful and majestic terms. To the sheep in the meadow, the grass meansnothing but food; to man, however, every blade has a message, poetic and beautiful.
Considered as a home, this world was made for man; in a thousand senses, it was not made for any other creature. It is the home of the oyster, but its wants are met by a little basin in the sea. It is the home of the elephant, but a few acres of Asiatic jungle furnish the food and the conditions necessary to its life. It is the home of the bird, but give it a tree and a worm, and a small circle of sky to fly around, and it needs no more. But man needs it all. For his hunger, the foods and the fruits of its continents, oceans, and skies. For his thirst, the waters of its thousand rills. For his shelter and protection, all its woods. For his thought, all its order and law. For his ills, the tender ministry of all its minerals and plants. He is related to it all, and to be completely furnished must be able to use it all.
Considered as a place of discipline, the earth is for man, for he is the only creature helped and advanced by discipline. The beaver cuts his tree and builds his dam to-day just as the beaver did in the first year of his existence. He has had the discipline that comes through work, but it has not improved him nor elevated him. In order that the bee may live, he must gather his honey and build his cell. This is discipline. But he never improves. He never grows in culture or skill. The bee that built his cell in the trees of paradise, and gathered his honey from the flowers that grew in the garden of Eden, knew as well how to construct a cell according to mathematical principles, and to pack it with honey, as the Italian bee of the nineteenth century, who stores his honey in a painted gum prepared for him by man.
Monkeys in South America cross rivers by twisting their tails, thus making bridgesof themselves. This is discipline and exercise of a complex and marvelous sort, but they devise no new ways of building bridges. They do not increase in knowledge or skill by their work. That he may gain the means of subsistence, man is under the necessity of work too. But his work is to him a means of growth and knowledge. His work has helped him forward, and secured to him culture and skill. Suggestions come to him, as he fells the forest, as he plows the field, as he plants the seed, and as he rows his dug-out. These suggestions he turns to account. He builds them into better axes for cutting the trees, into better plow-stocks for breaking the land, and into better boats for crossing the sea.
By turning the suggestions he has received into better methods, into improved tools and machinery, he has come from the dug-out to the ocean steamer; from the pack-muleto the palace car; from the scythe-blade to the mower and reaper; from the stone and sling to the improved army gun; from the spinning-wheel to the cotton-factory; and from the foaming steed of the flying messenger to the electric telegraph.
Because of the growth and improvement he has received through work, the tom-tom has long given place to the piano, and the tent to the modern home. Through struggle with nature, he has been piqued into a determination to conquer her, to ferret out her secrets, and master her processes.
The forces that oppose him he makes to serve him. The river current, which forbids him to cross, he utilizes to ferry him over. He sets his sail in the wind blowing eastward and avails himself of its power to carry him westward. The waves that rise to engulf him he turns into steam to outride them. The winds draw his water, theriver saws his plank. The tail of the beaver is adjusted by nature to the mud he needs to cement his dam; his tooth is already adjusted to the hardness of the tree, so that he cuts it down by instinct and without thought. The eagle finds the air already under his wings when he would fly, and his talons already prepared to hold his food, or to grasp a limb in the forest. The fish finds itself in the beginning of its existence in an element ready to respond to its fins, and in the presence of food adapted to its life. The lower animals find themselves at the start in a world immediately adjusted to their needs, so that they have only to use their feet, their teeth, their horns, their claws, their wings, and their fins, to conquer their enemies and find their food. The animal is wholly governed by natural law, and hence has no history. He moves on nature’s level, and is adjusted to her plains, her forests, her seas, and her skies, without histhought or his device. Man is not related in the same outward, immediate way to clothing, food, and fuel. His understanding, it is true, corresponds to the scheme of nature, but he must grow into this by study, by insight, by hints, by the use of faculties the lower animals do not possess. As long as he remains on the plain of the tiger and panther, and emulates their stealthy step to creep upon his prey, or his human foe, like them, he has no history.
The savage, perhaps, did master the mystery of the dug-out and the birch-bark canoe, but he had no place for his archives but a hole in the ground, and no experience but such as died with him. Man’s history begins with the attempt to conquer Nature. The contribution that Nature makes to human civilization is that she sets herself against his inward energies, as if to call them out. She puts limitations about him, that he may be prompted to rise abovethem. The fury and storm of the sea provokes his ingenuity to express itself in the steamship. The peril to life and fortune contained in the lightning’s flash, begets the steel rod that disarms it. The distance between the wheat that grows in one part of the globe and the need for bread in another, leads to the discovery of a method of transportation that obliterates it. Civilization is the expression that man has made of himself in his attempts, through thought and will, to effect the conquest of Nature. This witnesses to the peculiar and magnificent place which alone belongs to him in nature.
It may be true that he has no kingdom of his own, no privileged class of his own, and no titled order of his own; but it can hardly be disputed that he has a history of his own. This history, written in the dim glories of vast empires, in the rush of splendid cities, in the age-long conflict betweengood and evil, in the undying creed of martyred faith, in the hope, fidelity, trial, agony, triumph, and self-sacrifice of the human race, bears witness to the fact, either that the earth was made for man, or else that he is the only creature upon it capable of subduing it, transforming it, recreating it, and appropriating it. If man is only a natural product, the powers have certainly been engaged in a marvelously intelligent and complicated sort of conspiracy to advance his interests and to serve his dominion.
Nothing but what we have been accustomed to regard as design, intention, purpose, is sufficient to account for the fact, that the scheme of nature so completely corresponds to the understanding of man as to make it possible for him to command and claim all her possessions for his own.
Men will never accept such a happy coincidence as the work of chance. Theywill, by the very structure of their minds, believe that the scheme and the understanding, which, through the process of struggle and trial, grows into it, were intended, by the Great Author of both, the one for the other.