S. Laing

“ When do we say we know a thing? Not when we know its essence and primary origin, for of these the wisest philosopher is as ignorant as the rudest savage; but when we know its place in the universe, its relation to other things, and can fit it in to that harmonious sequence of events which is summed up in what are called Laws of Nature. The highest knowledge is when we can trace it up to its earliest origin from existing matter and energy, and follow it downwards so as to be able to predict its results. ”

“ Tennyson, the great poet of modern thought, who sums up so many of the ideas and tendencies of the age in concise and vigorous verse, writes:—
For woman is not undeveloped man,
Nor yet man’s opposite. Not opposite, yet different, so that the one supplements what is wanting to the other, and the harmonious union of the two makes ideal perfection. It is the glory of European civilisation to have done so much to develop this idea of the equality of the sexes, and to have gone so far towards emancipating the weaker half of the human species from the tyranny of the stronger half. ”

“ But a sensation from sight often calls up a multitude of ideas. Suppose you see the face of one with whom some fifty years ago you may have had some youthful love passages, but your lives drifted apart, and you now meet for the first time after these long years, how many ideas will crowd on the mind, how many nerve-cells will be set vibrating, and how many nerve-currents set coursing along intricate paths! ”

“ It is the great glory of Darwin to have established this firmly by an immense number of interesting and exhaustive instances, and thus placed evolution, or a scientific explanation of the development and laws of life, on a solid basis. Every day fresh discoveries and experiments confirm this great principle, and it has almost passed into the same phase as Newton’s law of gravity, as a fundamental law accepted as axiomatic by all men of science, and as the basis of modern thought, to which all religions and philosophies have to conform, accepted by nearly all modern thinkers. ”

“ Creation, in the sense of making something out of nothing, is a thing absolutely unknown and unknowable to us. If we say we make a ship or a steam-engine, we simply mean that we transform existing matter and existing energies into new combinations, which give results convenient for our purpose. So if we talk of making a world, our idea really is that if our powers and knowledge were indefinitely increased we might be able, given the atoms and energies with their laws of existence, to put them together so as to produce the desired results. ”

“ We cannot shake off this principle of polarity, and arrive at any knowledge, or even conception, of the absolute truth in regard to the atoms, energies, and natural laws, which make up the universe of matter and of all the ordinary and material functions of life; why should we expect to do so in the higher manifestations of the same life, which have been arrived at in the later stages of one unbroken course of evolution from monad to man? ”

“ The origin and progress of the idea that murder is a crime can almost be traced step by step. The wife of a rude savage does something which offends him; a violent perception of anger flashes from the visual organ to the perceptive area of the brain, and a reflex action flashes from it along the motor nerve to the muscles of the arm. He strikes and kills her, almost as unconsciously and instinctively as he walks or breathes. But other perceptions follow on the act. He finds next day that he has no one to cook his food; the image of her dying face photographed on his brain is an unpleasant one ”

“ In simple forms of society every one accepts the condition in which he finds himself as a matter of course, while in a more complex civilisation the fiend Envy steps in, and teaches the baser natures who are failures, to regard every success as an insult and every successful man as an enemy. Hence Labour rises in mad revolt against Capital; Socialists attack society with dynamite; and Utopian theorists preach a millennium to be attained by abolishing private property and individual liberty. ”

“ In one respect only Christianity shows a higher evolution of morality than Judaism—viz. its universality. Pure Judaism hardly rises above the idea of ‘neighbour,’ or those who were of the same race or common faith; while Christianity, as enlarged by St. Paul, embraces all mankind, and may truly say: ‘Humani nihil a me alienum puto.’
The idea that morality and religion are products of a slowly developing evolution is denounced by many as degrading and materialistic. In many the instinct of the ‘good’ is so strong that it seems to them sacrilege to attempt to explain it. ”

“ True religion consists in a recognition of this truth, a feeling of reverence in presence of the unknown, and, above all, a feeling of love and admiration for the good principle in whatever form it is manifested, in the beauties of nature and of art, in moral and physical purity and perfection, and all else that falls within the domain of the Prince of Light, in whose service, whether we conceive of him as an abstract principle, or accept some personification of him as a living figure, we enlist as loyal soldiers, doing our best to fight in his ranks against the powers of evil. ”

“ How can I attempt to show that the law of polarity extends to the more complex problems of human thought and life, if I fail in establishing its application to the simpler case of inorganic force and matter? It must be recollected also that among the primitive polarities is that of author and reader. It is my part to endeavour to present the leading facts and laws of the material universe in such plain and popular language that the ordinary reader who has neither time nor faculty for special studies may apprehend them clearly without excessive effort, or extraordinary intelligence. ”

“ Evolution, they say, has led constantly to higher and better things, and when carried far enough will lead to a state of society in which wars will cease, evil passions die out, and [174] universal love and charity prevail—in other words, to a millennium.
Even if this were true, what of the untold millions of the human race who have perished in their sins while evolution was slowly working out this tardy millennium? Are they the chair à canons, whom a Napoleon-like Deity sacrifices with cynical indifference, in the calculated moves of the game of Creation? ”

“ The ultimate basis of all knowledge is perception. Without an environment to create impressions, and an organ to receive them, we should know absolutely nothing. What is the environment and what the organ of human knowledge? The environment is the whole surrounding universe, or, in the last analysis, the motions, or changes of motion, by which the objects in that universe make impressions on the recipient organ. The organ is the grey matter of that large nervous agglomeration, the brain. ”

“ It is a fact that polarity is the law of existence. Why we know not, any more than we know the real essence and origin of the atoms and energies which are our other ultimate facts. But we accept atoms and energies, and accept the law of gravity and other laws; why not accept also the law of polarity, and admit that it is part of the ‘original impress’: one of the fundamental conditions under which the evolution of Creation from its ultimate elements is necessitated to proceed. This the human mind can understand ”

“ Or if the exercise of a class were to look through a microscope at the leaf of a plant or wing of an insect, and try who could best draw what they had seen and write a description of it in a legible hand and in good English, how many faculties would this call into play compared with the dull routine of parsing a Latin sentence or writing a halting copy of Greek iambics! Even grammar, the one thing which is supposed to be taught thoroughly, is taught so unintelligently that it awakens no interest beyond that of a parrot learning by rote. ”

“ The dogmas and miracles may quietly fade out of sight, as so many articles of the Athanasian Creed have already done, like mists before the rising rays of larger knowledge and purer morality, and yet the essence of Christianity will remain, as a worship of the good and beautiful, personified in the brightest example which has been afforded—that of Jesus, the son of the carpenter of Nazareth. ”

“ A priori, I can conceive that the true explanation of the universe might have been natural law, as the general rule, supplemented by miracles; just as readily as that it is law always, and miracle never. The verdict must be decided by the weight of evidence. The two theories must be called, face to face, before the tribunal of fact, and its decision must be respected. This is exactly what has been going on for the last two centuries, and specially for the last half century, and the record of decisions is now a very ample one. In every single instance law has carried the day against miracle. ”

“ Now of all the religious hypotheses which remain workable in the present state of human knowledge, that seems to me the best which frankly recognises the existence of this dual law, or law of polarity, as the fundamental condition of the universe, and, personifying the good principle under the name of Ormuzd, and the evil one under that of Ahriman, looks with earnest but silent and unspoken reverence on the great unknown beyond, which may, in some way incomprehensible to mortals, reconcile the two opposites, and give the final victory to the good. ”

“ To understand life, therefore, we must understand protoplasm; for protoplasm, closely as it approximates to colloid matter, is thoroughly alive. A whole family, the Monera, consist simply of a living globule of jelly, which has not even begun to be differentiated. Every molecule, as in a crystal, is of homogeneous chemical composition and an epitome of the whole mass. There are no special parts, no organs told off for particular functions, and yet all life-functions—nutrition, reproduction, sensation, and movement—are performed, but each by the whole body. ”

“ What is a magnet? It is a special manifestation of the more general principle of polarity, by which energy, when it passes from the passive or neutralised into the active state, does so under the condition of developing opposite and conflicting energies: no action without reaction, no positive without a negative, and, as we see it in the simplest form in our magnets, no North Pole without a South Pole—like ever repelling like and attracting unlike. ”

“ If I am good for anything, it is for a certain faculty of lucid condensation, and I have thought that I might apply this to some of the less-known branches of modern science, such as the new chemistry and physiology, as well as, in my first work, to the more familiar subjects of astronomy and geology; while at the same time I might extend it to some of the more obvious problems of religion, morals, metaphysics, and practical life, which force themselves, more and more every day, on the attention of intelligent thinkers. ”

“ But here also the same law of polarity operates, for as happy marriage affords the highest ideal, so do unhappy and ill-assorted unions involve the greatest misery and most complete shipwreck of life. Especially to the woman, for the man has other pursuits and occupations, and can to a great extent withdraw himself from domestic troubles; while the woman has no defence against the coarseness, selfishness, and vulgarity of the partner to whom she is tied, and who may make her life a perpetual purgatory, and drag all her finer intellectual and moral nature down to a lower level. ”

“ It is not unreasonable, therefore, that it should pay a higher insurance in the form of taxation, and especially when it passes by inheritance or settlement, when the new owner’s title is to a great extent artificial and the creation of the law. No one can dispute the abstract justice of a succession duty on all property, landed or personal, in proportion to its amount, passing by operation of law: the only question can be as to the amount, and the expediency of confining it within limits that shall not trench on confiscation or impair the desire to accumulate capital. ”

“ Some theorists, like Henry George, are for solving it by ignoring the rights altogether. According to them, private property in land is the source of all the evils that afflict modern society; poverty, depressions of trade, low profits, and low wages are caused by the constant drift towards high rents, due to the possession by a small section of the community of a monopoly in that which is as much a necessity of existence as air or water. Abolish private property in land, and straightway you will have the millennium. ”

“ A labourer who cannot find work at living wages is worse than a zero: he is a negative quantity as far as the accumulation of wealth is concerned. On the [245] other hand, every workman who finds work, even if it may not be of the ideally best description, is a wealth-producing machine. What he spends on himself and his family gives employment to other workmen, and the work must be poor indeed if the produce of a year’s labour is not more than the cost of a year’s subsistence. The surplus adds to the national capital, and thus capital and population go on increasing in geometrical progression. ”

“ The antithesis between the flesh and the spirit was carried to such an extreme and false extent, that everything that was pleasant and beautiful came to be regarded as sinful, and the odour of sanctity was an odour which the passer-by would do well to keep on the windward side of. This leaven of asceticism is the rock upon which Puritanism, monasticism, and many of the highest forms of Christian life have invariably split. It is contrary to human nature, and directly opposed to the spirit of the life and doctrines of the Founder of the religion. ”

“ No palæolithic savage ever hesitated about putting one foot after another in chase of a mammoth from a fear that his working hypothesis of uniform law might fail, the support of the solid earth give way, and with his next step he might find himself toppling over into the abyss of an infinite vacuum. In like manner Greeks and Romans, Indians and Chinese, monotheists, polytheists, pantheists, Jews and Buddhists, Christians and Mahometans, all use standard weights in their daily transactions without any misgivings that the law of gravity may turn out not to be uniform. ”

“ Mankind, and all the higher forms of life with which mankind has relations, can only propagate their species in one way: by the co-operation of two individuals of the species, who are essentially like and yet unlike, possessing attributes which are complementary of one another, and whose union is requisite to originate a new living unit—in other words, by sexual propagation. So certain does this appear that all ancient religions and philosophies begin by assuming a male and female principle for their gods, or first guesses at the unknown first causes of the phenomena of nature. ”

“ Man is man and master of his fate. If this be an illusion, why not everything—evidence of the senses, experiment, natural law, science, as well as morality and religion?
To pursue this farther would lead us far astray into the misty realm of metaphysics, and I refer to it only as showing that the principle of the conservation of energy, standing as it does in apparent contradiction to our natural impressions, requires a fuller demonstration than the kindred principle of the indestructibility of matter. ”

“ But as a lobster which has cast its shell does not feel at ease until it has grown a new one, so thinking men of the present day are driven to devise, to a great extent each for themselves, some larger theory which may serve them as a ‘working hypothesis’ with which to go through life, and bring the ineradicable aspirations and emotions of their nature into some tolerable harmony with existing facts. ”

“ But if the landlord is practically omnipotent, and the tenant has no alternative but to promise to pay an impossible rent or to be turned out on the roadside and die of starvation, it is by no means so clear that the State should enforce the bargain unless the landlord submits to equitable terms. Or again, if the rent is not due to the intrinsic value of the land, but is a confiscation of the tenant’s improvements, it is far from being self-evident that the law should look only at landlords’ rights and forget all about landlords’ duties. ”

“ Plants, on the other hand, could not exist without a supply of the carbonic dioxide, which is their principal food, and which animals are continually pouring into the air from the combustion of their carbonised food in oxygen, which supplies them with heat and energy. Thus nature is one huge aquarium, in which animal and vegetable life balance each other by their contrasted and supplemental action, and, as in the inorganic world, harmonious existence becomes possible by this due balance of opposing factors. ”

“ It would be unfair to omit mention of the great part which Christianity has had in this good work; not only by direct precept and recognition of religious equality, but even more by the embodiment, as its ideal, of the feminine virtues of gentleness, humility, resignation, self-devotion, and charity. Ideal Christianity is, in fact, what may be called the feminine pole of conduct and morality, as opposed to the masculine one of courage, hardihood, energy, and self-reliance. ”

“ Chemical energy, or the mutual attractions and repulsions of atoms, is even more powerful than that of molecules. It displays itself in their elective affinities, or what may be called the likes and dislikes, or loves and hatreds, of these ultimate particles. Perhaps the best illustration will be afforded by that ‘latest resource of civilisation,’ dynamite. This substance, or to give it its scientific name, nitro-glycerine, is composed of molecules each of which is a complex combination of nine atoms of oxygen, five of hydrogen, three of nitrogen, and three of carbon. ”

“ No wonder that the nerve-corpuscles are numerous and minute, and the nerve-channels many and complicated.
When we come to the seats of the intellectual faculties the question becomes still more obscure. They are probably situated in the hinder and front parts of the surface of the brain, and depend on the grey matter consisting of an immense number of minute sensory cells. It has been computed that there are millions in the area of a square inch, and they are all in a state of the most delicate equilibrium, vibrating with the slightest breath of nervous impression. ”

“ It is not therefore from any wish to indulge in what Herbert Spencer calls the ‘unpatriotic bias,’ and depreciate my own country, that I am disposed to think that the younger English-speaking communities are somewhat in advance of ourselves in this matter of the relations of the sexes, but simply because I think that the feeling is there more widespread and universal. We have in English society two strata in which women are still considered as inferior beings to men: a lower one, where better ideas have not yet permeated the dense mass of ignorance and brutality ”