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Title: Tantalus
Or, the future of Man
Author: F. C. S. Schiller
Release date: December 12, 2023 [eBook #72381]
Language: English
Original publication: New York: E. P. Dutton & Company, 1924
Credits: Tim Lindell, David E. Brown, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This book was produced from images made available by the HathiTrust Digital Library.)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TANTALUS ***
TANTALUS
OR
THE FUTURE OF MAN
TO-DAY AND TO-MORROW
SERIES
DAEDALUS, or Science and the Future
_By J. B. S. Haldane_
ICARUS, or The Future of Science
_By Bertrand Russell, F. R. S._
THE MONGOL IN OUR MIDST
_By F. G. Crookshank, M.D._
WIRELESS POSSIBILITIES
_By Prof. A. M. Low_
NARCISSUS, or The Anatomy of Clothes
_By Gerald Heard_
TANTALUS, or The Future of Man
_By F. C. S. Schiller_
IN PREPARATION
THE PASSING OF THE PHANTOMS
_By Professor Patten_
WOMAN AND THE FUTURE
_By Anthony M. Ludovici_
E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY
TANTALUS
OR
The Future of Man
BY
F. C. S. SCHILLER
_M.A., D.Sc.; Fellow and Tutor of
Corpus Christi College, Oxford_
[Illustration]
_Man never is, but always to be, blest_
NEW YORK
E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY
681 FIFTH AVENUE
Copyright 1924
By E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY
_All Rights Reserved_
_First Printing, November, 1924
Second Printing, March, 1925_
Printed in the United States of America
PREFACE
I rather anticipate that superficial critics who do not like the
argument of this essay will accuse it of pessimism, a charge which
perhaps means little more than that they do not like it. Nevertheless,
it may be worth while to point out, (1) that pessimism is not a
logical objection to a contention of which the truth cannot otherwise
be questioned, and (2) that though the argument of _Tantalus_ may be
said generally to corroborate that of _Daedalus_ and _Icarus_, yet its
conclusion is much less pessimistic than theirs, because (3) it makes
it very plain that the evils which threaten the future of mankind are
in no case unavoidable. If it is called ‘pessimism’ to point out the
methods by which men may escape destruction, because men do not care
to adopt them, I suppose it must be ‘optimism’ to rush violently and
open-eyed down a precipice, and to expect to be saved by a miracle.
Certainly such would appear to be the belief upon which human affairs
are at present conducted.
F.C.S.S.
TANTALUS
TANTALUS
PROLOGUE: THE ORACLE OF THE DEAD
When I read in Mr Haldane’s _Daedalus_ the wonderful things that
Science was going to do for us, and in Mr Russell’s _Icarus_ how easily
both we and it might come to grief in consequence, it at once became
plain to me that of all the heroes of antiquity Tantalus would be the
one best fitted to prognosticate the probable future of Man. For, if
we interpret the history of Daedalus as meaning the collapse of Minoan
civilization under the strain imposed on its moral fibre by material
progress, and the fate of Icarus as meaning man’s inability to use the
powers of the air without crashing, one could gauge the probability
that history would repeat itself still further, and that man would
once more allow his vices to cheat him of the happiness that seemed so
clearly within his reach.
I determined, however, to confirm this intelligent forecast by
consulting Tantalus himself. To consult the oracle of a dead hero, it
was, I knew, only necessary to undergo the process of ‘incubation,’ a
sort of camping out on his tomb, in the skin of a sacrificial beast;
and fortunately the tomb of Tantalus had just been discovered in
Phrygia by the archæologists of the British School at Athens.
I set out, therefore, with great promptitude, and in due course,
arrived at the ruins of the tomb of Tantalus. They did not much
resemble a first-class hotel, and, of course, my idea of an
‘incubation’ was well laughed at, but I managed to find a pretty level
corner, more or less sheltered from the wind. Here I wrapped myself up
in my excellent rug, having decided to dispense with the more correct
method of ensconcing myself in the gory hide of a sacrificial ox. The
night was fine, though cold, and fortunately there were no mosquitoes,
nor any of the other insects one would inevitably have encountered in
the dwellings of the living. But the ground was very, very, hard, and
I tossed about for hours, regretting my classical education and the
psychical researcher’s rashness in trying foolish experiments.
At last I fell asleep, at least I suppose so. I also fell a great deal
further. I seemed to go right through my rocky bed, and to fall down,
down, down, interminably, through a sort of elastic space. When at last
the not wholly unpleasant motion stopped, I found myself in a vast,
grey, sandy plain, illuminated by a cold grey light as though of dawn.
The only thing to catch the eye was a small round hummock, not very far
from me. On it grew a mighty tree, with dark green pointed leaves and
drooping branches, surrounded by a gleaming white fence or paling. I
naturally walked towards it.
As I got near, I noticed that the white paling, which completely
enclosed the hummock, was composed of _bones_, or rather of every
imaginable sort of spine, tooth and sting, garnished with the saws
and swords of sawfish and swordfish, and all knit together into an
impenetrable _cheval de frise_ that prevented approach to the foot of
the tree. The soil all round this strange hedge had apparently been
trodden into deep mud by some creature that had walked round and round
the tree, and the water required for its manufacture was supplied by a
small spring which rose within the enclosure and flowed out through its
interstices.
As I walked round the tree to the further side of the hummock, I came
upon an extraordinary sight. I beheld a naked man trying to reach some
of the fruit that dangled down from the outer branches of the tree but
appeared to be just out of his reach, and so intent upon his design
that he did not notice my approach. He seemed a tall man, and the upper
part of his body was well formed. His features were good and regular,
though somewhat hard, and not intellectual; his resolute jaw bespoke
the man of action, accustomed to command and to be obeyed. So far, his
appearance would have done credit to any modern captain of industry.
But the lower half of his body appeared to be misshapen. His thighs
were so curved that he could not walk upright, but had to stoop and
lean forward as he slowly shambled along. Still more monstrous seemed
the feet, with which he churned up the mud around the fence; they were
enormous and hardly seemed human in their shape, though they were too
deeply plunged in the mud to permit one to see what exactly was wrong
with them.
This strange being, whom the bold intuition of the dream-consciousness
at once identified with Tantalus, was evidently trying to grasp the
fruit that hung from the lower branches of the tree. For a while his
efforts were vain, but then a gust of wind brought within his reach a
large conical shining red fruit he had long coveted. It was one of the
strange features of the tree that it was covered with fruit, and higher
up also with flowers, of the most various sizes, shapes, and colours.
He seized it triumphantly; but the effect was surprising. For he had
hardly touched it when it exploded, and covered him from head to foot
with its blood-red juice. He at once sank senseless to the ground. But,
after a while, he slowly recovered, and recommenced his old game. This
time, he attacked a large round yellowish fruit; but when he succeeded
in seizing it, it too exploded, and poured out upon him volumes of a
heavy yellow-green vapour. Again he collapsed, and this time his stupor
lasted longer.
By the time he began to stir again I had, I thought, grasped the
situation, and determined to intervene. So I drew near, and addressed
him: “Can I be mistaken in thinking that I see before me the far-famed
hero, Tantalus, boon companion of the gods?” “And their victim.”
“And what tree is this, I pray you, about which you busy yourself?”
“The Tree of Knowledge.” “And the water, which you have trampled
into mud, is what?” “The Elixir of Life.” “Then you seem to have all
the materials for a happy life. Why don’t you eat of the fruits of
the tree, and drink of the elixir?” “You have seen the results of my
efforts.” “I cannot but think you have been unfortunate in your choice
of the fruits: there are many that look much better higher up.” “And
how am I to get at them?” “Well, of course, you must break through
all these _debris_ of former animal life, which bar your access to
the trunk of the tree, and prevent you from drinking of the water of
life; after that, you can climb up the tree, and pick the best of the
fruits.” “And how am I to break through the barrier of bones?” “Even
though you appear to have no instruments, you can surely find a stone?”
“Where shall I find a stone in the Plain of Forgetfulness? And besides,
how should I climb the tree with these ... feet?” And he lifted up
one of his monstrous limbs. “Certainly you seem to be pretty badly
earth-bound,” said I, “but I will try to find you some stones.”
So off I set. I had not got far when a fierce blast struck me and
peppered me with sand. I struggled stoutly against it, but was nearly
choked. And then, suddenly, I awoke to find that day was dawning and
that the wind had gone round to the north, and was blowing in my face.
But I was well satisfied with my experiment. The interpretation of the
response I had obtained from Tantalus was too plain to need the aid of
a psycho-analyst.
I
Our best prophets are growing very anxious about our future. They
are afraid we are getting to know too much, and are likely to use
our knowledge to commit suicide, or rather, mutual murder, after the
fashion of the Kilkenny cats.
To these dismal forecasts it is reasonable to reply that there is
nothing novel in the present situation. The human race has always known
enough to wreck itself, and its abounding folly has always inspired
its wise men with the gravest apprehension for its future. Yet,
either by chance or providence, it has always known also how to avoid
destruction. It has never known enough to make itself happy; nor does
it know enough to do so now. Its future has always been precarious,
because it has always been uncertain whether it would use its knowledge
well or ill, to improve or to ruin itself. It has always had a choice
between alternative policies, and it has so now.
What sense then is there in making such a fuss about the present
crisis? It is a particularly plain case of the perennial choice of
Hercules. What is needed is just a little clear thinking and plain
speaking to a society more than usually debauched by a long regime of
flattery, propaganda, and subterfuge. Mankind _can_ make a fool of
itself, as it always could; if it does, its blood will be on its own
head. For it has knowledge enough to avoid the dangers that threaten
it, if it will use its knowledge properly.
II
The first fact to be enunciated plainly, and faced, until it grows
familiar, and its import is appreciated, is that, biologically
speaking, Man has ceased to be a progressive species long ago. The
evolutionary impetus which carried our ancestors from the level
of the ape or even of the lemur, through such subhuman types as
_Pithecanthropus_, and the Heidelberg and Neanderthal men, to ‘modern’
man, seems to have spent itself by the middle of the palæolithic
period, _i.e._ say, thirty thousand years ago. At any rate, the
Cro-Magnon people of the Aurignacian age, who then appeared upon the
scene, were in no wise inferior to any subsequent race of men, either
in stature or in brain capacity. They average six feet three inches
in height, with one-sixth more brains than the modern European. So
far indeed as their physical remains can indicate, they seem to have
been very definitely the finest race of human beings that has ever
existed. If we have improved on them, it has probably been only in such
minor matters as resistance to the microbes of the many diseases which
flourish among dense populations under slum conditions. Against that
probability have to be set such certainties as that our toes and many
of our muscles are being atrophied and that we are getting more liable
to caries and baldness.
This remarkable fact of the arrest of his biological development is
certainly the greatest mystery in the history of Man. It at once
raises two further questions: In the first place, how did it happen,
and what caused it? And, secondly, what has enabled man, nevertheless,
to progress in other respects, in knowledge, in power, and in culture?
To answer the first question we cannot do better than argue back from
what is now the most salient feature about man’s biological position,
namely that his survival is determined far more by his relations to
the social group to which he belongs than by personal efficiency:
hence he can draw on the collective resources of his tribe, and, to a
growing extent, gets emancipated from the control of natural selection.
Thus social selection and the survival of societies profoundly modify
(and often defeat), the working of natural selection. The advantages
are obvious; it is no longer essential for a member of a society that
collectively controls the conditions of existence to develop any high
degree of personal capacity, in order to survive. A single wise and
provident minister, like Joseph, is enough to keep alive millions of
Pharaoh’s subjects through the lean years of famine. But the inferior
and incompetent survive with the rest.
Now, if we suppose that by mid-palæolithic times man had established
his ascendency over nature and perfected his social organization
sufficiently to render these services to his fellows, we have suggested
a possible cause of the cessation of biological progress. For social
influences are as likely as not to be ‘contra-selective,’ that is, to
tend to preserve by preference the stocks which are less viable from
a merely biological point of view. They are markedly so at present,
and it would be asking too much to expect the tribal chiefs of early
men to have been wise and provident enough to see to it that their
social institutions were eugenical in their effects. We cannot even now
find such a pitch of wisdom and providence in the controllers of our
destinies.
III
The answer to the second question is much easier. The human race has
continued to progress in its culture, in its knowledge, in its power
over nature, because it has devised institutions which have created
for it a continuous social memory that defies death. Now, as ever, the
wisest and the best must die, while their place is taken by babies
born as ignorant and void of knowledge as in the beginning. Only there
has been invented apparatus which relieves the civilized baby of his
hereditary ignorance, and renders him potentially the heir to all the
wisdom of the ages.
In the first place, _Language_ not only extends enormously the
possibilities of co-operation and common action, but also renders
possible the consolidation of customs and their preservation by oral
tradition. In the next place, _Writing_ enables a society to record
all that it considers worth remembering. Upon these two inventions may
be reared vast intricate structures, religious, political, social,
and scientific, which knit together and dominate human societies from
generation to generation, and create the conditions for an almost
mechanical accumulation of knowledge.
Man has thereby become an educable creature and fallen a victim to the
arts of the examiner. Provided the mechanisms of education do not get
out of gear, it is hard to set limits to the amounts of knowledge with
which he can be crammed; but it is clear that they are far greater
than he could ever have acquired in a lifetime for himself. And as
education (of sorts) has now become world wide, it might seem that the
future of knowledge was now assured, and no longer liable to setbacks
such as those due to the famous burning of the library of Alexandria
at the command of the Caliph Omar, or the extinction of the only Greek
scientists who seriously concerned themselves with the applications of
science to life, of Archimedes and his School, in the sack of Syracuse.
At any rate, it seemed clear that progress in knowledge could continue
indefinitely, even in an otherwise stationary or decadent society.
Whoever argued thus would fail to make sufficient allowance for the
perversity of human nature. Human institutions, like the human body,
are ever tending to get clogged with the waste products of their
own working. Hence, so far from performing the functions for which
they were intended, they are constantly becoming the most formidable
instruments for their frustration. Experience shows how easily Churches
become the most effective deadeners of religious zeal, how often Law
becomes the negation of justice, how deadly is the School to the inborn
craving for knowledge which seemed to Aristotle so characteristic of
man’s nature.
Accordingly, no one familiar with the actual working of academic
institutions is likely to fall into the error of pinning his faith to
them. They are, of course, designed for the purpose of preserving and
promoting the highest and most advanced knowledge hitherto attained:
but do they anywhere fulfil this purpose? Its execution must of
necessity be left to professors not exempt from human frailty, always
selected by more or less defective methods, whose interests by no
means coincide with those of their subjects. The interest of the
subject is to become more widely understood and so more influential.
The interest of the professor is to become more unassailable, and so
more authoritative. He achieves this by becoming more technical. For
the more technical he gets, the fewer can comprehend him; the fewer
are competent to criticize him, the more of an oracle he becomes; if,
therefore, he wishes for an easy life of undisturbed academic leisure,
the more he will indulge his natural tendency to grow more technical as
his knowledge grows, the more he will turn away from those aspects of
his subject which have any direct practical or human interest. He will
wrap himself in mysteries of technical jargon, and become as nearly
as possible unintelligible. Truly, as William James once exclaimed to
me, apropos of the policy of certain philosophers, “the natural enemy
of any subject is the professor thereof!” It is clear that if these
tendencies are allowed to prevail, every subject must in course of time
become unteachable, and not worth learning.
Thus educational systems become the chief enemies of education, and
seats of learning the chief obstacles to the growth of knowledge, while
in an otherwise stagnant or decadent society these tendencies sooner
or later get the upper hand and utterly corrupt the social memory.
The power of the professor is revealed not so much by the things he
teaches, as by the things he fails or refuses to teach.
History is full of examples. How many religions have not perished
from ritual sclerosis, how many sciences have not been degraded into
pseudo-sciences or games! Logic has been just examinable nonsense for
over two thousand years. The present economic chaos in the world has
been indirectly brought about by the policy adopted by the professors
of economics forty or fifty years ago, to suit their own convenience.
For they then decided that they must escape from the unwelcome
attentions of the public by becoming more ‘scientific’; _i.e._ they
ceased to express themselves in plain language and took to mathematical
formulae and curves instead; with the result that the world promptly
relapsed into its primitive depths of economic ignorance. So soon as
the professors had retired from it, every economic heresy and delusion,
which had been exposed and uprooted by Adam Smith, at once revived
and flourished. In one generation economics disappeared completely
from the public ken and the political world, and the makers of the
Peace Treaties of 1919 were so incapable of understanding an economic
argument that not even the lucid intelligence of Mr Keynes could
dissuade them from enacting the preposterous conditions which rendered
impossible the realization of their aims.[A] Nor was it so very long
ago that, in order to save the Mathematical Tripos at Cambridge, it
had to be recast, because it had degenerated into an intellectual
jig-saw puzzle, wholly unrelated to the applications of mathematics
to the other sciences. To avoid jealousies, I hasten to add that the
University of Oxford, which has organized itself as an asylum for
lost causes, skilfully cultivates, by means of its classical and
historical studies, a backward-looking bias in its _alumni_. The true
‘Greats’ man is meant to go down indelibly imbued with the conviction
that in matters of morals and politics nothing of importance has been
discovered or said since Plato and Aristotle, and that nothing else
matters.
Clearly then we cannot take for granted that in any society knowledge
can progress without limits, nor can we count on our academic
institutions to save us from stagnation and decay, even in matters of
knowledge. All institutions are social mechanisms, and all mechanisms
need a modicum of intelligent supervision, in the absence of which they
become dangerous engines of destruction.
IV
It appears then that we can extract no guarantee of progress either
from the nature of Man or from the nature of human institutions. There
is no _law_ of progress, if by law be meant a superior power able to
coerce the creatures that are said to ‘obey’ it. Neither can we extract
from history any proof of the superiority of civilized man over his
uncivilized ancestors. Such progress as has been attained has been
achieved only by the active co-operation of the progressive organisms:
every step has been fought for, and progress has ceased whenever
effort ceased, or was switched off into different directions.
Consequently, modern man has no right to ‘boast himself far better
than his fathers’--in intrinsic quality. Intrinsically, _i.e._ apart
from the effects of culture and social training, it is probable that
he is slightly _inferior_ in capacity to his own ancestors, while
very markedly inferior to the great races of antiquity (like the
Greeks) in their hey-day. Nor is there any reason to suppose that his
moral nature has changed materially. Modern man may be a little tamer
and better-tempered, because he has been herded together much more
closely than primitive man, and city life, even in slums, demands,
and produces, a certain ‘urbanity.’ For many generations those who
would not pack tight and could not stand the strain of constantly
exhibiting ‘company manners’ and accommodating their action to those
of their fellows, must have fled away into the wilds, where they could
be independent, or have eliminated themselves in other ways, _e.g._ by
committing murder. It is probable that the social history of Iceland,
settled as it was by unbridled individualists who would not brook any
form of organized government, might throw some light on this process of
taming the individual.
Nevertheless there is little doubt that, in the main, humanity is
still Yahoo-manity. Alike in mentality and in _moral_, modern man is
still substantially identical with his palæolithic ancestors. He is
still the irrational, impulsive, emotional, foolish, destructive,
cruel, credulous, creature he always was. Normally the Yahoo in him
is kept under control by the constant pressure of a variety of social
institutions; but let anything upset an established social order, and
the Yahoo comes to the front at once. The history of the past fifty
years abundantly proves that man is still capable of atrocities equal
to any in his record. Not only have we lived through the greatest
political and the deadliest natural convulsion, the Great War and the
Tokio earthquake, but the Russian Revolution has outdone the French and
Landru the legendary Bluebeard, while for mingled atrocity and baseness
the murders of Rasputin and of Alexander of Serbia are unsurpassed in
history. The painful truth is that civilization has not improved Man’s
moral nature. His moral habits are still mainly matters of custom, and
the effect of moral theories is nugatory everywhere. Thus civilization
is not even skin deep; it does not go deeper than the clothes.
V
Clearly it is risky to expose the inelastic nature of so stubbornly
conservative a creature to new conditions at a rapid rate. He may not
be able to adapt himself quickly enough, and his old reactions, which
did little or no harm before, may become extremely dangerous. Yet this
is just what has happened. Science has exposed the palæolithic savage
masquerading in modern garb to a series of physical and mental shocks
which have endangered his equilibrium. It has also enormously extended
his power and armed him with a variety of delicate and penetrating
instruments which have often proved edge tools in his hands and which
the utmost wisdom could hardly be trusted to use aright. Under these
conditions the fighting instinct ceases to be an antiquated foible,
like the hunting instinct, and becomes a deadly danger. No wonder the
more prescient are dismayed at the prospect of the old savage passions
running amok in the full panoply of civilization!
VI
Nor is this the final item in our tale of woe. A third and most
sinister fact which has to be faced is that Civilization, as at present
constituted, is very definitely a deteriorating agency, conducing to
the degeneration of mankind. This effect of Civilization is nothing
new, but has been operating, it would seem, from the beginning,
though not probably as intensively as now: its discovery, however, is
very recent. It is quite indirect, unintended, and fortuitous, but
cumulative, and in the long run has probably been a chief cause in the
decay of States and civilizations, as well as an important factor in
the arrest of biological development which we have had to recognize.
A simple and easily observable sociological fact is at the bottom
of the mischief. The different classes in a society have different
birth-rates and death-rates, and the differences between these yield
their several net rates of increase or decrease. Now, whereas under
the conditions of savage life class differences can hardly exist, or,
at least cannot be accentuated, so that the whole tribe flourishes or
perishes together, and among barbarians the upper classes have a very
great advantage and the tribe recruits itself chiefly from the children
of the chiefs, because the conditions of life are so severe that
the lower classes are not able to rear many children; in civilized
societies these conditions are reversed. It is found that though both
birth-rates and death-rates grow as we descend the social scale, so
does the net rate of increase. Indeed, the highest or ruling class
nowhere appears to keep up its numbers without considerable recruitment
from below. So society, as at present organized, is always dying off at
the top, and proliferating at the bottom, of the social pyramid.
The disastrous consequences of this sort of social organization may
easily be apprehended, with a little reflection. (1) All societies,
even those whose social structure is most rigid, have need of ability,
discover it, and reward it by social promotion. But (2) as this
promotion means passing into a class with a relatively inadequate
rate of reproduction, the biological penalty attaching to social
promotion is racial extinction. Thus (3) the ultimate reward of merit
is sterilization, and society appears to be an organization devoted to
the suicidal task of extirpating any ability it may chance to contain,
by draining it away from any stratum in which it may occur, promoting
it into the highest, and there destroying it. It is exactly as though a
dairyman should set in motion apparatus for separating the cream from
the milk, and then, as it rose, skim it off, and throw it away!
At present it is calculated that the highest classes in the chief
civilized societies only reproduce themselves to the extent of fifty
per cent. of their number in each generation, so that the hereditary
ability of half of them is lost in each generation. But even then the
remainder is largely wasted. It is churned into froth and scum by
social forces. For neither now nor at any time has social intelligence
shown itself equal to devising a training for the youth of the highest
classes that would provide them with adequate stimuli to develop their
faculties, and to lead a strenuous life of social service. The children
of the rich are tempted to live for ‘society’ in the narrower sense,
which means frittering away one’s life on a round of vacuous amusement;
and they rarely resist the temptation.
Naturally it is difficult to trace the accumulation of ability in the
upper social strata which is theoretically to be expected. On the other
hand, in some subjects at any rate, the symptoms of a world-wide
dearth of ability are becoming unmistakable. The Great War, though it
made abundantly manifest the prevalence of incompetents in high places,
did not reveal the existence either of a great general or of a great
statesman anywhere.
It is superfluous to insist either on the fatuity of a social
organization such as this, or on the certainty of racial degeneration
which it entails: but it may be well to draw attention to the
_rapidity_ with which these degenerative processes are at present
sapping the vitality and value of our civilized races. The failure to
reproduce does not, as in former times, affect merely the aristocracy
in the highest social strata; it has spread to the whole of the
professional and middle classes, and to most classes of skilled
labour. It is not too much to say that, with the exception of the
miners, none of the desirable elements in the nation are doing their
bit to keep up the population, and that its continued growth is mainly
due to the unrestrained breeding of the casual labourers and the
feeble-minded.
In the rest of the population its increase is checked by birth-control
and the postponement of marriage, neither of which affects the
undesirables. They are too stupid, reckless, and ignorant to practise
the former, and have nothing to gain by the latter. Also, to make it
quite certain that they shall form a true ‘proletariate,’ the wisdom
of our rulers ordains that a knowledge of birth-control shall be a
(fatal) privilege reserved for the intelligent and well-to-do. They
instruct the police to prevent it from penetrating to the poor and
stupid--apparently from the mistaken idea that the State needs plenty
of cheap labour and cheap cannon-fodder. So child-bearing remains
compulsory for the wretched women of the poor, whereas elsewhere only
those women produce children who desire them, and natural selection is
thus allowed gradually to eliminate the temperament of the unwilling
(and, therefore, probably less competent) mother.
The dysgenic effects of this class-discrimination are further
intensified by other tendencies: (1) The advance of medicine and
hygiene has enormously diminished selective mortality in all classes,
and improved the chances of weaklings to survive and leave descendants.
(2) The advance of philanthropy preserves them, especially in the lower
classes, where formerly the mortality was largely selective and a high
death-rate both counteracted an excessive birth-rate and increased the
value of the survivors. The emotional appeal of ‘baby-saving’ goes so
directly to the heart of civilized man that his head never reflects
whether the particular baby is worth saving, and whether a baby from a
different breed and with a better pedigree would not be better worth
having. (3) Modern obstetrics save the lives of thousands of women,
whose physique is such that in former times they would inevitably
have died in child-birth. The result is that child-birth is becoming
more difficult. Also babies brought up on the bottle, which has an
irresistible attraction for microbes of all sorts, are apt to be less
healthy than those nourished in the more primitive manner.
(4) Lastly, the bastardizing, which used formerly to provide for a
considerable infusion of the blood of the upper classes into the lower,
has now practically ceased. Since the merry days of King Charles
II, very few noble families of royal descent have been added to the
peerage.
VII
Our civilization, therefore, carries within it the seeds of its own
decay and destruction, and it does not require high prophetic gifts
to predict the future of a race which goes the way marked out for
it by such perversely suicidal institutions. It cannot improve, but
must degenerate, and the only question would seem to be whether the
decadence of Man will leave him viable as a biological species. At
present it looks very much as though his blind leaders would lead
their blinder followers from catastrophe to catastrophe, through
imperialist world-wars to class-wars and to race-wars: but even if, by
some miraculous rally of human intelligence, these convulsions should
be averted, the prospect will not really be improved. The violent
destruction of the human race by war will only be more _dramatic_:
it will not be more _fatal_ than its gradual decay as its arts and
sciences slowly fossilize, or peter out, in an overwhelming flood of
feeble-mindedness.
VIII
This is the one alternative. We shall get to it, if we go on as we
are going: but it is not our doom. The alternative is to exercise the
danger by an adequate reform of human nature and of human institutions.
This again seems attainable in at least two ways.
The first, and more paradoxical, of these would make a direct frontal
attack on the palæolithic Yahoo, and try to bring about his moral
reformation. The means for this purpose are ready to hand. Christian
ethics have been in being, as a moral theory, for nearly two thousand
years. If the Yahoo could be really christianized, he would at any
rate cease to cut his own throat in cutting his neighbour’s. And it
is astonishing how much scientific support is forthcoming for the
paradoxes of Christian ethics. It is an historical fact that the meek
have a knack of inheriting the earth after their lords and masters
have killed each other off, and that passive resistance wears out the
greatest violence, and conscientious objection defeats the craftiest
opportunism, if only you can get enough of them. It is a biological
fact that the rabbit survives better than the tiger; and the same would
appear to be true of the human ‘rabbit’ and the Nietzschean ‘wild
beast.’ Intrinsically, therefore, Christian ethics might be well worth
trying.
I wish I could believe it likely that this policy will be tried. But
the palæolithic Yahoo has been dosed with Christian ethics for two
thousand years, and they have never either impressed or improved
him. Their paradoxes give him a moral shock, and he has not brains
enough to grasp their rationality. He will exclaim rather with the
gallant admiral in the House of Commons, when justly indignant at
the unheard-of notion that a ‘moral gesture’ of a Labour Government
might be the best policy, “Good God, sir, if we are to rely for our
air security on the Sermon on the Mount, all I can say is, ‘_God help
us!_’” Besides, the proposal to put Christian principles into practice
would be bitterly opposed by all the Churches in Christendom.[B]
It may be more prudent, therefore, to try a safer though slower
way, that of the eugenical reform and reconstruction of our social
organization. As to the possibilities in this direction, I incline to
be much more hopeful than either Mr Haldane or Mr Russell. Mr Haldane
despises eugenics, because he is looking for the more spectacular
advent of the ‘ectogenetic baby,’ to be the Saviour of mankind. But he
might not arrive, or be seriously delayed in transmission, or fail to
come up to Mr Haldane’s expectations; and, meanwhile, we cannot afford
to wait.
Mr Russell distrusts eugenics, because he fears that any eugenical
scheme put into practice will be ‘nobbled’ by our present ruling rings,
and perverted into an instrument to consolidate their power. He thinks
that dissent from dominant beliefs and institutions will be taken as
proof of imbecility, and sterilized accordingly,[C] and that the result
would merely be to spread over all the world the hopeless uniformity
and commonplaceness of the ideals and practice of the American business
man, as depicted by Mr Sinclair Lewis.
This prognostication would be very plausible, if we supposed eugenics
to be introduced into the social structure from above, privily, and in
small doses, and by way of administrative order, as under the existing
Acts to check the spread of feeble-mindedness.
But this method would be impracticable. It would not generate anything
like the social momentum necessary to carry through any radical
reform. To make it effective, it would have to be backed by a powerful,
enthusiastic, and intelligent public sentiment. This presupposes that
the public has been biologically educated to appreciate the actual
situation, and has been thoroughly wrought up about the fatuity of our
social order, and understands what is wrong with it. If it understands
that much, it can also be made to see that it is fantastic to expect
to leap to the Ideal State by a social revolution. No one now knows
what the institutions of an Ideal State would be like, nor how they
would work. We only know that they will have to be evolved out of our
present institutions, even as the Superman has to be evolved out of the
primitive Yahoo. In either case, the process will be gradual, and its
success will depend upon details, on taking one step after another at
the right rate in the right direction, making a new adjustment here,
overcoming an old difficulty there, removing obstacles, smoothing
over the shell-holes and scars dating from Man’s lurid past, and, in
general, feeling one’s way systematically and scientifically to better
things. Such a mode of progression may seem unheroic, but it has the
great advantage that it is unlikely to go irretrievably wrong. If we
know from the outset that we are tentatively feeling our way, we shall
always be on the look out for traps and possibilities of going astray,
trying out the value of our policies by their results, and willing to
retrace our steps when we have made a false one.
The social temper, therefore, will become far more intelligent and
reasonable than it has been hitherto. It will be slow to dogmatize,
and will regard the _toleration_ of differences of opinion as among
the cardinal principles of a sanely progressive social order. For
as we can no longer assume, with Plato and the other Utopians, that
_perfection_ may be postulated, provision has always to be made for
the _improvement_ of the social order. It can never be accepted as
absolutely good, but must always be regarded as capable, in principle,
of being bettered. Even the best of established institutions are only
good relatively to the alternatives to which they showed themselves
superior: under changed conditions they may become inferior, and may
fail us, or ruin us, if we do not make haste to transform them into
something better fitted to the new conditions. Hence the social order
must be _plastic_, and must never be allowed to grow rigid. There must
always be room in it for experiments that have a reasonable prospect of
turning out to be improvements. For progress will depend on the timely
adoption of such novelties.
But society has no means of commanding them at will. It has to wait
till they occur to some one. As biological variations have to arise
spontaneously before they can be selected, so valuable new ideas
have to occur in a human mind before they can be tried and approved.
Society cannot originate discoveries, it can only refrain from so
organizing itself as to stamp them out when they occur. It is vitally
necessary, therefore, that we should beware of suppressing variations,
whether of thought or of bodily endowment, that may prove to be
valuable.
Also, of course, we shall have to realize that our whole procedure is
_essentially experimental_, and all that this implies. We do not know,
at the outset, what would be the best obtainable type, either of man or
of society; true, but we mean to find out. Nor is it unreasonable to
expect to do so as we go along. We start with a pretty shrewd suspicion
that certain types, say the feeble-minded, the sickly, the insane, are
undesirable, and that no good can come of coddling and cultivating
them: we similarly are pretty sure that certain other types, say the
intelligent, healthy, and energetic, are inherently superior to the
former. We try, therefore, to improve and increase the better types.
How precisely, and how most effectively we do not quite know, though we
can make pretty good preliminary guesses. So we try. That will entail
experimentation in a variety of directions, with ‘control experiments,’
and a modicum of mistakes. But our mistakes will not be fatal, because
if we advance tentatively and with intelligent apprehension, we shall
realize them in time, and shall not feel bound to persist in any course
that yields unsatisfactory results.
It is really one of the great advantages of eugenics that it cannot
proceed upon any cut-and-dried scheme, but will have to be guided by
the results of experiment and the fruits of experience, each of which
will be followed and discussed by an intensely interested public.
For the difficulties of eugenics are all difficulties of detail,
and intelligent attention to detail may overcome them all. Thus
the dysgenical working of civilized society, which has come about
unintentionally through the unfortunate convergence of a number of
tendencies, may be altered similarly, by changing the incidence of
social forces.
IX
If scientific eugenics can put a stop to the contra-selection
incidental to civilization, Man will recover the plasticity and
the progressiveness he once possessed, and will be able to evolve
further--in whatever direction seems to him best. We need not take
alarm at this possibility, for with his superior knowledge he may
surely be trusted to make a better job of his evolution than the
_Lemur_ and the _Pithecanthropus_, who were our progenitors and managed
to evolve into modern man.
But the process will necessarily be a slow one, even though a
comprehensive scheme of eugenics will be providing simultaneously _two_
sources of improvement, by the elimination of defectives at the bottom
of the social scale, and by the increase of ability at the top. As,
moreover, time presses, and sheer destruction may overtake us before
eugenics have made much difference, it would be highly desirable if
some means could be found to accelerate the change of heart required.
For this purpose, I am much less inclined to put my trust in the
advance of pharmacology than Mr Haldane and Mr Russell.[D] Hitherto
new drugs have only meant new vices, sometimes (like cocaine) of so
fascinating a character as to distract the whole police force from
their proper function of repressing crime. So it seems legitimate to
be very sceptical about moral transformation scenes to be wrought by
pills and injections.
On the other hand there does seem to be a science from the possible
progress of which something of a sensational kind might not
unreasonably be expected. It is, moreover, the science most directly
concerned with affairs of this sort. Psychology, the science of human
mentality, is, by common consent, in a deplorably backward state. It
has remained a ground for metaphysical excursions and a playground for
the arbitrary pedantries of classificatory systematists. Its efforts
to become scientific have only led it to ape assumptions and to borrow
notions found to be appropriate in sciences with widely different
problems and objects. The results, as the psychologists themselves
confess, are meagre and disappointing; which, of course, only proves
that the borrowed notions are inappropriate and incapable of making
Psychology into an effective science. But if psychologists should
take it into their heads to settle down to business, to recognize
the primary obligation of every science to develop methods and
conceptions capable of working upon its subject-matter, and so tried
to authenticate their ‘truth’ after the ordinary fashion of the other
sciences, namely by the pragmatic test of successful working, some
surprising effects might be elicited even from the actual human mind.
For there is reason to suppose that its present organization is very
far from being the best of which it is capable. It has come about in a
very haphazard manner, and we are not at present making anything like
an adequate use of all our powers. Hence by changing the gearing and
re-arranging the traditional coupling, so to speak, of our faculties,
improvements might conceivably be wrought which would seem to us to
border on the miraculous. Thus a pragmatically efficient Psychology
might actually invert the miracle of Circe, and really transform the
Yahoo into a man.
X
I have endeavoured in this very summary sketch to show that the doom of
Tantalus is by no means unconditional, and that he can save himself if
he chooses, and that by no superhuman effort, but merely by recognizing
facts that are right before his nose and well within his comprehension,
and by a little clear thinking upon their import. But I would not
presume to predict that he _will_ save himself: history affords no
unambiguous guide. It seems to show that something worse and something
better than what actually happens is always conceivable, and that
neither our hopes nor our fears are ever fully realized. If so, poor
Tantalus, hoping against hope, fearing against reason, may muddle along
for a good while yet, without repeating either his ancient error of
imagining that he could sup with the gods, or his modern folly of using
his reason, as Goethe’s Mephistopheles declared, only to become more
bestial than any beast!
FOOTNOTES:
[A] The most absurd perhaps was the clause, appearing in all the Peace
Treaties, which made ‘reparations’ a first charge on all the assets of
the defeated countries. This, of course, completely destroyed their
credit, and incapacitated them from raising a loan, forcing them to
have recourse to progressive inflation, and so into bankruptcy.
[B] This does _not_ mean, of course, that there are no Christians
in the Churches, but only that they are not in control of these
institutions.
[C] _Icarus_, p. 49.
[D] cf. _Daedalus_, p. 34; _Icarus_, p. 54.
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:
Italicized text is surrounded by underscores: _italics_.
Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.
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