We are now going to apply our reason to this enormous problem of human conduct; we are going to ask ourselves the question: What kind of life do we want? What kind of life are we going to make? What are the standards by which we may know excellence in life, and distinguish it from failure and waste and blunder in life? Obviously, when we have done this, we shall have solved the moral problem; all we shall have to say is, act so that your actions help to bring the desirable things into being, and do not act so as to hinder or weaken them.
We shall not be able to go to nature to settle this question for us. This is our problem, not nature's. But we shall find, as usual, that we can pick up precious hints from her; we shall be wise to study her ways, and learn from her successes and her failures. We are proud of her latest product, ourselves. Let us see how she made us; what were the stages on the way to man?
First in the scale of evolution, it appears, came inert matter. We call it inert, because it looks that way, though we know, of course, that it consists of infinite numbers of molecules vibrating with speed which we can measure even though we cannot imagine it. This "matter" is enormously fascinating, and a wise man will hesitate to speak patronizingly about it. Nevertheless, considering matter apart from the mind which studies it, we decide that it represents a low stage of being. We speak contemptuously of stones and
clods and lumps of clay. We award more respect to things like mountains and tempest-tossed oceans, because they are big; in the early days of our race we used to worship these things, but now we think of them merely as the raw material of life, and we should not be in the least interested in becoming a mountain or an ocean.
Almost everyone would agree, therefore, that what we call "life" is a higher and more important achievement of nature. And if
we wish to grade this life, we do so according to its sentience--that is to say, the amount and intensity of the consciousness which grows in it. We are interested in the one-celled organisms which swarm everywhere throughout nature, and we study the mysterious processes by which they nourish and beget themselves; we suspect that they have a germ of consciousness in them; but we are surer of the meaning and importance of the consciousness we detect in some complex organism like a fish or bird. We learn to know the signs of consciousness, of dawning intelligence, and we esteem the various kinds of creatures according to the amount of it they possess. We reject mere physical bigness and mere strength. Joyce Kilmer may write:
"Poems are made by men like me, But only God can make a tree"--
And that seems to us a charming bit of fancy; but the common sense of the thing is voiced to us much better in the lines of old Ben
Jonson:
"It is not growing like a tree
In bulk doth make man better be."
If we take two animals of equal bulk, the hippopotamus and the elephant, we shall be far more interested in the elephant, because of the intelligence and what we call "character" which he displays. There are good elephants and bad elephants, kind ones and treacherous ones. We love the dog because we can make a companion of him; that is, because we can teach him to react to human stimuli.
Of all animals we are fascinated most by the monkey, because he is nearest to man, and displays the keenest intelligence. Someone may say that this is all mere human egotism, and that we have no way of really being sure that the life of elephants and hippopotami is not more interesting and significant than the life of men. Never having been either of these animals, I cannot say with assurance; but I know that I have the power to exterminate these creatures, or to pen them in cages, and they are helpless to
protect themselves, or even to understand what is happening to them. So I am irresistibly driven to conclude that intelligence is more safe and more worth while than unintelligence; in short, that intelligence is nature's highest product up to date, and that to foster and develop it is the best guess I can make as to the path of wisdom--that is, of intelligence!
When we come to deal with human values, we find that we can trace much the same kind of evolution. Back in the days of the cave man, it was physical strength which dominated the horde; but nowadays, except in the imagination of the small boy, the "strong man" does not cut much of a figure. We go once, perhaps, to see him lift his heavy weights and break his iron bars, but then we are tired of him. Mere strength had to yield in the struggle for life to quickness of eye and hand, to energy which for lack of a better name we may call "nervous." The pugilist who has nothing but muscle goes down before his lighter antagonist who can keep out
of his reach, and the crowd loves the football hero who can duck and dodge and make the long runs. One might cite a thousand illustrations, such as the British bowmen breaking down the heavily armored knights, or the quick-moving, light vessels of Britain overcoming the huge galleons of Spain. And as society develops and becomes more complex, the fighting man becomes less and less a man of muscle, and more and more a man of "nerve." Alexander, Caesar and Napoleon would have stood a poor chance in personal combat against many of their followers. They led, because they were men of energy and cunning, able to maintain the subtle thing we call prestige.
17
Now the world has moved into an industrial era, and who are the great men of our time, the men whose lightest words are heeded, whose doings are spread upon the front pages of our newspapers? Obviously, they are the men of money. We may pretend to ourselves that we do not really stand in awe of a Morgan or a Rockefeller, but that we admire, let us say, an Edison or a Roosevelt. But Edison himself is a man of money, and will tell you that he had to be a man of money in order to be free to conduct his experiments. As for our politicians and statesmen, they either serve the men of money, or the men of money suppress them, as they did Roosevelt. The Morgans and the Rockefellers do not do much talking; they do not have to. They content themselves with being obeyed, and the shaping of our society is in their hands.
And yet, some of us really believe that there are higher faculties in man than the ability to manipulate the stock market. We consider that the great inventor, the great poet, the great moralist, contributes more to human happiness than the man who, by cunning and persistence, succeeds in monopolizing some material necessity of human life. "Poets," says Shelley, "are the unacknowledged legislators of mankind." If this strange statement is anywhere near to truth, it is surely of importance that we should decide what are the higher powers in men, and how they may be recognized, and how fostered and developed.
What is, in its essence, the process of evolution from the lower to the higher forms of mental life? It is a process of expanding consciousness; the developing of ability to apprehend a wider and wider circle of existence, to share it, to struggle for it as we do for the life we call our "own." The test of the higher mental forms is therefore a test of universality, of sympathetic inclusiveness; or, to use commoner words, it is a test of enlightened unselfishness.
Every human individual has the will to life, the instinct of self-preservation, which persuades him that he is of importance; but the test of his development is his ability to realize that, important though he may be, he is but a small part of the universe, and his highest interests are not in himself alone, his highest duties are not owed to himself alone. And as the life becomes more of the intellect, this fact becomes more and more obvious, more and more dominating. Men who monopolize the material things of the world and their control are necessarily self-seeking; but in the realm of the higher faculties this element, in the very nature of the case, is forced into the background. It is evident that truth is not truth for the Standard Oil Company, nor for