John Fiske

“ For his knowledge of the history of human thinking assures him that such methods have through all past time proved barren of aught save strife, while his own bold yet humble method is the only one through which truth has ever been elicited. To pursue unflinchingly the methods of science requires dauntless courage and a faith that nothing can shake. Such courage and such loyalty to nature brings its own reward. ”

“ But on such grounds, if on no other, the faith in immortality is likely to be shared by all who look upon the genesis of the highest spiritual qualities in Man as the goal of Nature’s creative work. This view has survived the Copernican revolution in science, and it has survived the Darwinian revolution. Nay, if the foregoing exposition be sound, it is Darwinism which has placed Humanity upon a higher pinnacle than ever. The future is lighted for us with the radiant colours of hope. Strife and sorrow shall disappear. ”

“ It is urged that if man is physically akin to a baboon, as pigs are akin to horses, and cows to deer, then Humanity can in nowise be regarded as occupying a peculiar place in the universe; it becomes a mere incident in an endless series of changes, and how can we say that the same process of evolution that has produced mankind may not by and by produce something far more perfect? ”

“ But he who has mastered the Darwinian theory, he who recognizes the slow and subtle process of evolution as the way in which God makes things come to pass, must take afar higher view. He sees that in the deadly struggle for existence which has raged throughout countless aeons of time, the whole creation has been groaning and travailing together in order to bring forth that last consummate specimen of God’s handiwork, the Human Soul. ”

“ The principle in accordance with which the gloved hand of the dandy becomes white and soft while the hand of the labouring man grows brown and tough is the main principle at work in the improvement of Humanity. Our intellectual faculties, our passions and prejudices, our tastes and habits, become strengthened by use and weakened by disuse, just as the blacksmith’s arm grows strong and the horse turned out to pasture becomes unfit for work. This law of use and disuse has been of immense importance throughout the whole evolution of organic life. With Man it has come to be paramount. ”

“ The first appearance of infancy in the animal world thus heralded the new era which was to be crowned by the development of Man. With the beginnings of infancy there came the first dawning of a conscious life similar in nature to the conscious life of human beings, and there came, moreover, on the part of parents, the beginning of feelings and actions not purely self-regarding. But still more, the period of infancy was a period of plasticity. The career of each individual being no longer wholly predetermined by the careers of its ancestors, it began to become teachable. ”

“ The great originality of his teaching, and the feature that has chiefly given it power in the world, lay in the distinctness with which he conceived a state of society 107from which every vestige of strife, and the modes of behaviour adapted to ages of strife, shall be utterly and forever swept away. Through misery that has seemed unendurable and turmoil that has seemed endless, men have thought on that gracious life and its sublime ideal, and have taken comfort in the sweetly solemn message of peace on earth and good will to men. ”

“ When we study the Divine Comedy of Dante—that wonderful book wherein all the knowledge and speculation, all the sorrows and yearnings, of the far-off Middle Ages are enshrined in the glory of imperishable verse—we are brought face to face with a theory of the world and with ways of reasoning about the facts of nature which seem strange to us to-day, but from the influence of which we are not yet, and doubtless never shall be, wholly freed. ”

“ In a very deep sense all human science is but the increment of the power of the eye, and all human art is the increment of the power of the hand.8 Vision and manipulation,—these, in their countless indirect and transfigured forms, are the two coöperating factors in all intellectual progress. It is not merely that with the telescope we see extinct volcanoes on the moon, or resolve spots of nebulous cloud into clusters of blazing suns; it is that in every scientific theory we frame by indirect methods visual images of things not present to sense. ”

“ And as when God revealed himself to his ancient prophet He came not in the earthquake or the tempest but in a voice that was still and small, so that divine spark the Soul, as it takes up its brief abode in this realm of fleeting phenomena, chooses not the central sun where elemental forces forever blaze and clash, but selects an outlying terrestrial nook where seeds may germinate in silence, and where through slow fruition the mysterious forms of organic life may come to take shape and thrive. ”

“ Upon the question whether Humanity is, after all, to cast in its lot with the grass that withers and the beasts that perish, the whole foregoing argument has a bearing that is by no means remote or far-fetched. It is not likely that we shall ever succeed in making the immortality of the soul a matter of scientific demonstration, for we lack the requisite data. It must ever remain an affair of religion rather than of science. ”

“ Are we to regard the Creator’s work as like that of a child, who builds houses out of blocks, just for the pleasure of knocking them down? For aught that science can tell us, it may be so, but I can see no good reason for believing any such thing. On such a view 115the riddle of the universe becomes a riddle without a meaning. Why, then, are we any more called upon to throw away our belief in the permanence of the spiritual element in Man than we are called upon to throw away our belief in the constancy of Nature? ”

“ The earth, so marvellously wrought to man’s uses, will also be cast aside. The day is to come, no doubt, when the heavens shall vanish as a scroll, and the elements be melted with fervent heat. So small is the value which Nature sets upon the perishable forms of matter! ”

“ The variant forms on either side have survived while the constant forms have perished, so that the lines of demarcation between allied species have grown more and more distinct, and it is usually only by going back to fossil ages that we can supply the missing links of continuity. In the desperate struggle for existence no peculiarity, physical or psychical, however slight, has been too insignificant for natural selection to seize and enhance; and the myriad fantastic forms and hues of animal and vegetal life illustrate the seeming capriciousness of its workings. ”

“ But before we can fully understand the exalted position which the Darwinian theory assigns to man, another point demands consideration. The natural selection of psychical peculiarities does not alone account for the origin of Man, or explain his most signal difference from all other animals. That difference is unquestionably a difference in kind, but in saying this one must guard against misunderstanding. Not only in the world of organic life, but throughout the known universe, the doctrine of evolution regards differences in kind as due to the gradual accumulation of differences in degree. ”

“ Countless martyrs we have seen throwing away the physical earthly life as so much worthless dross, and all for the sake of purely spiritual truths. As with religion, so with the scientific spirit and the artistic spirit,—the unquenchable craving to know the secrets of nature, and the yearning to create the beautiful in form and colour and sound. ”

“ In the stream of history which, beginning on the shores of the Mediterranean Sea, has widened until in our day it covers both sides of the Atlantic and is fast extending over the remotest parts of the earth,—in this main stream of history the warfare which has gone on has had a clearly discernible purpose and meaning. Broadly considered, this warfare has been chiefly the struggle of the higher industrial civilization in defending itself against the attacks of neighbours who had not advanced beyond that early stage of humanity in which warfare was chronic and normal. ”

“ In the cruel strife of centuries has it not often seemed as if the earth were to be rather the prize of the hardest heart and the strongest fist? To many men these words of Christ have been as foolishness and as a stumbling-block, and the ethics of the Sermon on the Mount have been openly derided as too good for this world. In that wonderful picture of modern life which is the greatest work of one of the great seers of our time, Victor Hugo gives a concrete illustration of the working of Christ’s methods. ”

“ Inherited tendencies and aptitudes still form the foundations of character; but individual experience has come to count as an enormous factor in modifying the career of mankind from generation to generation. It is not too much to say that the difference between man and all other living creatures, in respect of teachableness, progressiveness, and individuality of character, surpasses all other differences of kind that are known to exist in the universe. ”

“ In our day it is hard to realize the startling effect of the discovery that Man does not dwell at the centre of things, but is the denizen of an obscure and tiny speck of cosmical matter quite invisible amid the innumerable throng of flaming suns that make up our galaxy. To the contemporaries of Copernicus the new theory seemed to strike at the very foundations of Christian theology. ”

“ In a universe where so much had been made without discernible reference to Man, what became of that elaborate scheme of salvation which seemed to rest upon the assumption that the career of Humanity was the sole object of God’s creative forethought and fostering care? ”

“ In moral development this same Australian, whose language contains no words for justice and benevolence, is less remote from dogs and baboons than from a Howard or a Garrison. In progressiveness, too, the difference between the lowest and the highest races of men is no less conspicuous. The Australian is more teachable than the ape, but his limit is nevertheless very quickly reached. All the distinctive attributes of Man, in short, have been developed to an enormous extent through long ages of social evolution. ”

“ The conquering tribe, while annexing its neighbours, gradually admitted them to a share in the government. In this way arose the Roman empire, the largest, the most stable, and in its best days the most pacific political aggregate the world had as yet seen. Throughout the best part of Europe, its conquests succeeded in transforming the ancient predatory type of society into the modern industrial type. It effectually broke up the primeval clan-system, with its narrow ethical ideas, and arrived at the broad conception of rights and duties coextensive with Humanity. ”

“ The infinite and eternal Power which is thus revealed in the physical life of the universe seems in nowise akin to the human soul. The idea of beneficent purpose seems for the moment to be excluded from nature, and a blind process, known as Natural Selection, is the deity that slumbers not nor sleeps. ”

“ Still more, as we examine the records of past life upon our globe, and study the mutual relations of the living things that still remain, it appears that the higher forms of life—including Man himself—are the modified descendants of lower forms. Zoölogically speaking, Man can no longer be regarded as a creature apart by himself. We cannot erect an order on purpose to contain him, as Cuvier tried to do; we cannot even make a separate family for him. Man is not only a vertebrate, a mammal, and a primate, but he belongs, as a genus, to the catarrhine family of apes. ”