The Great Ideas Today 1963

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Angel

Fate

Animal

Form

Aristocracy

Art

God Good and

Evil

Astronomy

Government

Beauty

Habit

Being

Happiness

Cause

History

Chance

Honor

Change

Hypothesis

Citizen

Idea

Constitution

Immortality

Courage

Induction

Custom and Convention

Infinity

Definition

Judgment

Democracy

Justice

Desire

Knowledge

Dialectic

Labor

Duty

Language

Education

Law

Element

Liberty

Emotion

Life

and Death

Eternity

Logic

Evolution

Love

Experience

Man

Family

Mathematics

The Great Matter

^^^^^^^^^^^^H^^^^^^^^H

Mechanics

H^^H^

Medicine

I^^^K!"

Memory and

laeas

Imagirlation

IH

Reli&[ion o

1

Revolution

Metaphysics

Rhetoric

Mind Monarchy

Same and Other

Nature

Sense

Necessity and Contirigency

Sign and Symbol

Ohgarchy

Sin

One and Many

Slavery

Opinion

Soul

Opposition

Space

Philosophy

State

Physics

Temperance

Pleasure and Pa in

Theology

Poetry

Time

Principle

Truth

Progress

Tyranny

Prophecy

Universal and Particular

Prudence

Virtue and Vice

Punishment

Science

War and

Peace

Quality

Wealth

Quantity

Will

Reasoning

Wisdom

Relation

World

THE GREAT IDEAS TODAY

1963

THE FALL OF ICARUS

by Peter Paul Rubens Icarus did not heed the warnings of his father

the

and flew too

close to the sun;

wax which held together his wings melted, and Icarus crashed to his death.

THE GREAT IDEAS TODAY 1963 WILLIAM BENTON Publisher

Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc Chicago, London, Toronto, Geneva, Sydney

@

1963 By Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc.

Copyright under International Copyright Union All rights reserved

under Pan American and Universal Copyright Conventions

by Encyclopaedia

Britannica, Inc.

Printed in the U.S.A.

Existentialism translated

©

by Jean-Paul

Sartre,

by Bernard Frechtman.

1947 by The Philosophical Library,

Inc.

Reprinted by permission.

"Death Stories of

in

Venice" reprinted from

Three Decades by Thomas Mann,

translated

by H.

by permission

T. Lowe-Porter,

of Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.,

Copyright 1930, 1936, by Alfred A. Knopf,

and by permission

of Martin Seeker

& Warburg

Inc.,

Limited.

THE GREAT IDEAS TODAY Mortimer

Robert M. Hutchins

J.

1963

Adler

Editors in Chief

Peter C. Wolff Executive Editor

Milton Mayer

Paul M. Gilchrist

Contributing Editor

Assistant Editor

CONTRIBUTORS Herbert

J.

Muller

Paul Tillich

•

Hannah Arendt

Aldous Huxley

Brown

Harrison

Space Symposium

Saul Bellow

Leonard Engel and Kenneth Brodney Biological Sciences

Literature

John Herman Randall,

and Medicine

Edward U. Condon

Jr.

Physical Sciences

Philosophy and Religion

and Technology

Reuel Denney Social Sciences

James Whitmore Art Director

and Law

Donald

E. Stewart

Managing Editor

Judith Jones Editorial Assistant

FOREWORD Great Ideas The contemporary

Today attempts and thought

life

past.

To

the extent that

it

of the great books to the

to relate the outstanding events of to the

succeeds in doing

accumulated wisdom of the this, it

the great ideas on the main currents of our better understanding of both the present

Part

of each annual edition of

I

reveals the relevance

contemporary scene and throws the life

and the

today.

The

light of

result

is

a

past.

The Great Ideas Today focuses upon

a topic or issue of prime importance during the year under review. This

year the topic selected

space exploration. The editors asked

is

ers—a historian, a novelist, a theologian, a

five think-

political philosopher,

and a

physical scientist— to express their views concerning the effects of space exploration on the stature of man.

The

add a commentary sum-

editors

marizing what the great books contribute to this subject. In Part II the editors examine important developments in the political and social realm. This year the subject under consideration is the changing

tempo

of history;

i.e.,

the ever accelerating rate of institutional and

technological change, which

is

perhaps already occurring

at a

pace too

rapid for the good of mankind. Part III contains five essays reviewing the most recent advances in

the arts and sciences. Here the main emphasis in scientific research or

in

form or substance

new

is

upon new departures upon novelty

These developments have their roots books and the great ideas. Following each

in literature.

in the tradition of the great

of the essays

is

applications of science, and

a Note to the Reader that calls his attention to relevant

materials in Great Books of the Western World. The essays themselves enable him to keep abreast of the advancing front in the major fields of

inquiry and creative activity. Part

IV

includes a

directly supplements Great

number

Books

of the

Western World.

It

of short works that deserve to be considered as candi-

dates for a permanent place

among

the great writings of the West. These

are chosen by the editors for their variety as well as for their relevance to current events. This year the selections are

Thomas Mann's Death

in

Venice, Robert Malthus' Essay on Population, and Jean-Paul Sartre's Existentialism.

Part

keep

V

his

enables the owner of Great Books of the Western

World

to

Syntopicon up to date. Each of the 102 chapters in the Syntopi-

con contains a

list

of

recommended

additional readings. This year the

the chapters dealing with ideas in biology and psycholreading up to date. In subsequent years, bibliographies will be brought are ogy lists in

furnished for chapters in other fields of knowledge.

THE EDITORS

A

NOTE ON REFERENCE STYLE

the following pages, passages Inare referred to by volume,

in Great Books of the Western World page number, and page section. For example, "Vol. 39, p. 210b" refers to page 210 in Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations, which is Volume 39 in Great Books of the Western World. The small letter "b" indicates the page section. In books printed in single column "a" and "b" refer to the upper and lower halves of the page. In books printed in double column, "a" and "b" refer to the upper and lower halves of the left column, "c" and "d" to the upper

and lower halves

For example, "Vol. 53, p. 210b" page 210, since Volume 53, James's Princi-

of the right column.

refers to the lower half of

ples of Psychology,

is

printed in single column.

On

the other hand,

"Vol. 7, p. 210b" refers to the lower left quarter of the page,

Volume

7, Plato's

Dialogues,

is

printed in double column.

since

CONTENTS PART ONE

A Symposium Has Man's Conquest

on Space

of

Space Increased

or Diminished His Stature?

Herbert J. Muller Aldous Huxley Hannah Arendt Paul Tillich

5 21

35 49

Harrison Brown

61

PART TWO

An The Tempo

Essay on Time

of History:

An

analysis

by the editors

83

PART THREE The

Year's

Developments

in the Arts

and Sciences

Literature, Saul Bellow

135

and Medicine, Leonard Engel and Kenneth Brodney Philosophy and Religion, John Herman Randall, Jr. Physical Sciences and Technology, Edward U. Condon Social Sciences and Law, Reuel Denney

227

Biological Sciences

181

279

359

PART FOUR Additions to the Great Books Library Death

in Venice,

Thomas Mann

Existentialism, Jean-Paul Sartre Essay on Population, Robert Malthus

395 443 463

PART FIVE Additions to the Syntopicon

555

PART ONE

A Symposium on Space HAS MAN'S CONQUEST OF SPACE

INCREASED OR DIMINISHED HIS STATURE?

MULLER ALDOUS HUXLEY HANNAH ARENDT

HERBERT

J.

PAUL TILLICH

HARRISON BROWN

INTRODUCTION up the symposium that

setting

Inan approach to space exploration

follows, the editors deliberately took different

from that common

in

news-

papers and magazines. The question asked here does not have to do with the scientific, economic, or military results of space exploration, but rather with

its effects

on man. The editors asked the

five participants in

the symposium what, in their opinion, the exploration of space is doing to man's view of himself and to man's condition. The question does not

man as a scientist, nor man as a producer or consumer, but man as human. We therefore invited non-scientists as well as a

concern rather

scientist to participate in the

symposium. Our panel includes a

historian,

a novelist, a political philosopher, a theologian, and a physical scientist. gave them free rein to express their opinions, but asked them par-

We

ticularly

consider whether, from their special perspectives,

to

exploration

is

the American people in particular. In will give a

space

human race in general and for brief, we hope that this symposium

a desirable pursuit for the

new

focus to the discussion about the American efforts in

space.

The space race already has

lost

some

of

its

ful of persons into orbit, a feeling

too

much

is

being

made

is

of astronauts

At a time when more than a hand-

novelty.

neither the Russians nor the Americans have launched

already beginning to develop that

and cosmonauts, and that a mere

circling of the earth in a space vehicle hardly warrants

much

excitement.

Thus, the enthusiasm about men in space— whether they be Americans or Russians— appears to have waned. For the first time, questions are being asked about the desirability and utility of the space enterprise. Initially, when the Russians appeared to have all of the technical advantages and all the luck in their space efforts, there was wide support in the United States for the American attempts to catch up. The question of whether we ought to try to conquer space was bypassed as unworthy of further consideration, because the answer,

it

was

felt,

was

so obviously affirm-

ative.

As long

as the

conquest of space was (and

is)

considered merely in

between the U.S. and U.S.S.R., the only problems concerning it worth discussing were whether we were going about this conquest in the right way, whether the nation was getting its money's worth, and whether the Americans would succeed in beating the Russians. In this spirit, expenditures for rocketry and all the other appurtenances needed to send men and instruments, first to the moon and

the light

of'

a race

Symposium on Space then to the planets, were approved with alacrity by the Congress as well by the general public.

as

In recent months, however, either because the American achievements to match those of the Russians, or because the mere passage of time seems to make adventures in space less exciting, some

seem more nearly

doubts about the American space program are beginning to be voiced. Most criticism is directed against the eflForts to send men to the moon (Project Apollo). "Anybody who would spend 40 billion dollars in a race

moon for national prestige is nuts," said former President EisenhowSome critics question other aspects of the space program. What may we expect to learn about the moon and the planets by visiting them? What more can we learn about these heavenly bodies from human obto the er.

be learned by sending up highly sophisticated instruments? What are the costs which the United States is going to have to bear during the next few decades in order to reach its goals? Are these servers than can

costs tures,

affect

commensurate with the expected results? How are the expendiin money, in manpower, and in technological resources, going to other national goals of the United States? These are just a few of

the questions raised.

it

Our symposium concerns

the desirability of space exploration, but

deals only indirectly with

many

tions. It is

and

Should they be kept from asks:

What

of the scientific

directed to the basic principles behind

men engage it? What are

in the

and economic ques-

all

human

enterprise,

conquest of space? Indeed, can

the long-range results of this enterprise?

conquering space have on mankind? What effects would result from failure? Are the gains worth the risk? Our symposium tries to evaluate man's ventures into space from this point effect will success in

of view.

Technological considerations cannot, of course, be entirely eliminated from any debate about space exploration, and so they find their way into these essays. But they play a subordinate role here, the central question always being— Is space exploration good for man? Conversely, some consideration of the value of the space effort to mankind, not based on military or technological grounds, also finds its way into discussions dealing with the scientific and engineering principles behind the effort. Thus, in Part III of this book, in the article dealing with the year's advances in physical sciences and technology, we have one physicist questioning the U.S. Man-in-Space program, while another one defends it. This discussion, as well as the more technical matters concerning rockets

and

satellites, will

be found on pp. 279-357.

HERBERT). MULLER, bom

in

New

Mamaroneck,

he has taught

at Cornell

he in

in

history, including is

1905. Educated at Cornell University,

and Purdue, and

fessor at Indiana University.

on

one of America's best known historians, was

York, in

The Uses

He

is

is

now

Distinguished Service Pro-

the author of several widely read works

of the Past

and The Loom

completing a three-part history of freedom. The

the Ancient World, history,

won

philosophv,

Western World, appeared

Modern World,

is

in

At present,

volume. Freedom

Kappa award for the best work The second volume. Freedom in the February-, 1963, and the third. Freedom in the

the 1962 Phi Beta

and

of History. first

religion.

in preparation.

To

a good positivist,

I

suppose, the question whether man's conquest

of space has increased or diminished his stature

ingless.

about

This kind of "stature" unverifiable,

it is

is

simply mean-

wholly subjective, any speculation

is

and the question

Or

is

only another distraction from

was told, with some by a distinguished mathematician whose opinion I asked. the serious business of thought.

To

so

a historian, however, the question

more important because stature has

been a

live

it

irritation,

I

quite meaningful,

is

all

the

cannot be answered with assurance. Man's

issue

ever since the rise of

modem

science,

which has profoundly transformed his thought and feeling about himself. Today it brings up the very difficult but still practical problem of keeping abreast of our knowledge, trying to understand the extraordinary

we have been

history

making.

And

to

me

the irritation of the positivist

suggests the most extraordinary thing about the conquest of space— that

apparently

it

does not strike most Americans as really extraordinary.

They were obviously excited by the feats of our astronauts, but my impression was that they felt essentially like spectators at a sporting event or another Hollywood super-feature. Rocketing around the earth was only the latest wonder in an age for which wonders have become routine. Ordinary Americans might be baffled by the question we are discussing here, or consider

it

merely academic.

what excited them was not the feats of Man— it was the feats of Americans. We were catching up with those Russians. The godless Russians seem much prouder of the conquest of space as a

More

precisely,

human

purely

the Cold

triumph, but otherwise

War- the

it

is

chiefly another incident in

really important affair of our time.

How

the rest

world feels about the triumph I cannot be sure, except for one everywhere are not simply throwing out their chests. Whatever pride they may take in the latest demonstration of the fantastic power that the human race has achieved is mingled with dread of the of the

thing:

uses

Men

men may make

assume

men

in

of this power.

Such

possibilities bring

up what

I

our main concern. The pertinent question is not so much how general do feel about this feat as how they ought to feel, in

is

view of the past history and the possible future of the human race. Now, only one who is certain of the future, or of the meaning of man's history, can give a simple, positive answer. For the rest of us nothing would seem more obvious than the complexities and ambiguities of modern history; but nothing is harder to keep clearly, steadily in view.

The conquest

of space plainly does heighten the stature of 5

man by

a

Symposium on Space crowning demonstration of his amazing capacities and of achievements that writers are now disposed to sHght— apparently because they are not plain enough. It is also a striking demonstration of mighty forces that have tended to belittle man, and now threaten to end his history— though most ordinary Americans and Russians seem not to have been suflBciently struck by these tendencies. On both counts the oversights suggest a want of historical sense, especially because our age is supposed to be very historical-minded. So I think it might help to begin with a backward look.

way back

to the magic of prehistoric man. His artigrew more elaborate, and seemingly compulsive, as his culture developed. Although we can never be sure of his mentality, his belief in magic most likely had an ambivalent effect, confirming at once his fear of the unknown and his confidence that he knew it well enough to bend it to his own purposes. At least these dual tendencies became more marked with the rise of civilization. By this time men had learned a great deal, they had achieved remarkable technological feats, and presumably they felt bigger, as certainly they built bigger; yet they also developed a still more elaborate magic, which they failed to distinguish clearly from their empirical knowledge, and their monumental architecture testified to their belief in their utter dependence on the

Iet

^

us go

all

the

facts indicate that

gods.

it

The Greeks stand out

as the first

people to arrive at a clear con-

ception of natural causes and a conscious faith in man's

own powers

of

mind, without benefit of magic or supernatural aid— a faith that to early

seemed the deadly sin of pride, since they knew that only by God had man any stature. Even so, the pride of the Greeks was not overweening by modern standards. Their poets constantly warned them of the dangers of hubris; in their classical prime they took it for granted that man was a mortal animal, and they added no divine cubit to his stature by endowing him with an immortal soul. At no time did they entertain visions of earthly progress or indefinite improvement Christians

the grace of

of the

human

Hence

condition.

in this respect, too, the rise of

modern

science in the seven-

teenth century signified a revolution in thought. But because obviously heightened men's confidence in their

own

powers,

we

it

most

should

note that their possibly sinful pride was

still rather different from that most Americans and Russians today. Although Francis Bacon trumpeted the power that science could give man over nature, and foresaw the wondrous inventions that would come from it, men in general were not dazzled by visions of its practical utility and did not at once set about

of

applying their

new knowledge

to technology.

Enthusiasm was

stirred

rather by a purely intellectual feat, an apparent growth in mental or spir-

FroEL CASTRO EMBRACING RUSSL\X COSMONAUT GAGARIN The godless Russians seem much prouder of the conquest of space as a purehj

itual

up

in

human

triumph, hut otherwise

it is

chiefly another incident in the cold tear

symbolized by Newton's grand theory. Alexander Pope's well-known couplet:

stature,

It

was summed

Nature and Nature's law lay hid in night: said, Let Newton be! and all was hght.

God

The new confidence

in

man's powers of mind bred the singular idea

of progress, a faith such as

virtue of man's

no previous society had ever had, that by

own efforts the future would be ever men were not yet thinking primarily of

better than the

a material prog-

but again Rather they conceived a progress in civility, through reason and knowledge, by the standards of their "Age of Enlightenment." With this faith came more optimistic ideas about the nature of man that are especially pertinent for us, since they had much to do with the rise of depast;

ress.

mocracy.

Man was

conceived as an essentially rational animal, or at

enough to be capable of self-government; by the same token he was no longer essentially a fallen creature of Original Sin but naturally good, or at least good enough to be fit for freedom. From the least rational

ancient doctrine of "natural law," a universal principle of justice that in

the Enlightenment seemed confirmed by Newtonian law, thinkers

now

drew the corollary of "natural rights," the rights of all men to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Thomas Jefferson, the foremost champion of

common men, most

clearly indicated

7

how much

their increased polit-

Symposium on Space ical stature

owed

to science, in particular to his "great Trinity"— Bacon,

Newton, and Locke. We must now add that few men really understood the work of Newton, which for ordinary men was only a more difficult form of magic, and that the whole optimistic faith of the Enlightenment rested on a good deal of confusion. I believe that all of us who still hold to the ideals of a free society are logically and morally committed to the essentials of this faith, but for this reason we need at once to discount it. From

modern science has bred persistent, often wild misunderBacon had a crude idea of the inductive method that he expected would work all the miracles described in New Atlantis, his essay the beginning standing.

The spreading idea that was a progress was not based on a critical, empirical study of history, but was supported by a contempt as well as an ignorance of most of the past before God had decided— it would seem arbitrarily— to let Newton be. There was no logical connection between natural law as formulated by Newton and the rights of man, which hardly looked natural in view of man's history. The universe that he made so beautifully clear was due to get more mysterious than it had ever been before. Pope's couplet would inspire one by a modern poet: in science fiction. (See Vol. 30, pp. 199-214.)

human

history

It did not last: the Devil, howling Ho! Let Einstein be! restored the status quo.^

But in particular we have now to deal with the basic ambiguities or paradoxes involved in the triumph of science, the modern counterpart of the ambivalence of prehistoric magic. These did not

become

fully

apparent until the nineteenth century. Applied science then spurred the astounding development of technology, the immense increase in material wealth and power— the meaning of progress to most Americans. The

became a commonplace in all the advanced Western For many men it was supported by the theory of evolution, from which they drew the inference that progress was the law of nature as well as of history, and therefore in effect automatic, guaranteed. "Always toward perfection is the mighty movement," Herbert Spencer proclaimed. Yet the theory of evolution depressed many other men, even apart from the initial emphasis on the endless, bloody struggle for survival. It suggested that man had not been specially created as the lord of this earth, but was only an advanced form of ape, a latecomer on the animal scene. It recalled the pessimistic implications of modem science from the outset, the reasons why it might lessen the stature of idea of progress countries.

man by making him feel insignificant in the cosmos it revealed. Churchmen who attacked the heretical faith in science and in progress still 1

Reprinted by permission from Collected Poems by

Company

Ltd.

J.

C. Squire, Macmillan and

Herbert

J.

Muller

upheld the very proud belief that the universe had been created primarily for the sake of man; but since the Copemican theory had been estabhshed, man no longer lived at the center of the universe, and he found it harder to maintain so exalted an idea of his importance. In the seventeenth century Pascal most eloquently expressed the paradoxes of the human condition in the hght of the new knowledge. Man was not simply insignificant or vile; though he was "but a reed, the most feeble thing in nature," he was nevertheless a "thinking reed" (Pensees, 347; Vol. 33, p. 233b); he knew the universe that crushed him, he alone was aware of the immensities that dwarfed him. But therein lay his curse, a torment unkno\\Ti to the rest of the creation. Pascal himself was the more tormented because, while he beheved that thought made the dignity of man, he had the most vivid awareness of the limitations of reason. The human mind was always hable to error and folly; it could not really comprehend the extremes of the infinitely great and the infinitely small between which men lay, or the mysterious mixture of spirit and clay in his own nature; it could never know the final, absolute truth it always sought. In particular, reason could not prove what for Pascal was the all-important truth— the existence of God. So he devoted his own brilhant mind to combating the skepticism that was spreading with the scientific spirit; and in his anguish he also expressed most eloquently the reasons for doubt.

the Inways

nineteenth century, Pascal's worst fears were realized, but in

more paradoxical than he

anticipated.

On

much more

the one hand, the

doubt and dependent on God. On the other hand, it generated tendencies that undermined its own faith in reason, and that deprived man of the dignity and stature Pascal had accorded him. From the mechanistic Newtonian universe that had enthralled men by its perfect regularity, thinkers now drew out logical imphcations of determinism that denied man any real freedom. He was often represented as merely a creature of heredity and environment, whose behavior was governed by the same physico-chemical laws that governed the rest of the animal world. Social analysts concentrated on the impersonal, non-rational processes that determined his history. With Freud came much more awareness of the power of the positively irrational, which has been manifested all too plainly in recent history. In this century behaviorists and social scientists have concentrated still more on mechanical, involuntary, or conditioned behavior, if only to look more Hke pure scientists, on a par with physicists. For all such reasons modem literature has notoriously been given over to pessimism. Many writers have dwelt on the insignificance of man and the ultimate triumphant advance of science led to disbehef, while it also made men feel

meaninglessness of his

life in

religious

less

a universe utterly indiflFerent to him; 9

many

Symposium on Space

MILDRED DUNNOCK AND LEE

On

J.

COBB IN DEATH OF A SALESMAN

and Hamlet have dwindled Willy Loman, a salesman

the tragic stage, Oedipus Rex into

others have belittled

little

him by dwelling

chiefly

on his own meanness as

a slave to banal convention, vulgar desire, or neurotic fear.

On

the tragic

Rex and Hamlet have dwindled into Willy Loman, a salesman. Needless to add, no sophisticate today speaks of "progress" except as a theme of derision. And all this in an era when man has been literally surpassing his dreams, when science fiction has become fact! Jaded as we all tend to be, I think that the first and last word is properly one of awe over the conquest of space. At least we might try to realize how wonderful this feat is by the standards of even our boastful fathers. At the beginning of our century men were proud that they could circumnavigate the earth in two or three months, a voyage that had once taken years, and that no society before ours had ever accomplished. Now they can rocket around their earth in little more than an hour, and can count on flying to the moon and back in a day or so— an idea that once would have seemed as fantastic as cows jumping over the moon. This might remind stage Oedipus

us, too, that science is

itself

has long stirred the imagination of

men

because

it

a highly imaginative enterprise, a spiritual adventure—not the

cold, impious, materialistic business that

10

many

literary

men

of today

Herbert

make

it

out to be.

I

J.

Muller

propose to venture some speculation on the awesome a word on behalf of the unfashion-

possibilities of the future, first risking

able idea of progress.

Yet in awe—which properly includes fear as well as wonder— one has immediately to face up to the worst possibilities. Respect for the stature that man has achieved calls for stress chiefly on the growing menaces to his dignity,

now even

to his survival. It

would seem unnecessary to power he has

point out the plainest menace, the terrible destructive

acquired through science; but the fact remains that

men have

not really

taken this to heart in their political behavior, and none of us can be sure that

we

will escape the catastrophe of nuclear war.

when America

We

are

no

safer

Defense Department, but only six million— or about a hundredth of one per cent— to its Arms Control and Disarmament Agency. One is unfortunately obliged to spell out other obvious reasons for alarm, which never seem obvious enough.

To

devotes

fifty billion dollars

a year to

its

begin with, the driving motives in the conquest of space are of scientific. The American program for landing a man on

course not

the

moon

as soon as possible

is

The problems

it

the Russians. scientifically

much

less

primarily a feverish effort to keep

up with

poses are chiefly matters of engineering,

important than the researches going on in genet-

It may cost, I gather, from twenty to thirty billions over the next few years; and one can scarcely imagine Congress authorizing anything like such an expenditure for basic scientific research. Or for medical research, or any program to improve the nation's health; or for education itself. The conquest of space might do more to increase man's stature were it not a plain distraction from much more pressing needs, a reminder of how far we are from mastering life on our own earth. The rest of the world is unlikely to rejoice in the high estate of man while the overwhelming majority of men remain in a primitive state, often on a wretchedly low standard of Hving, with countless millions simply not getting enough to eat; but Congress would dismiss as reckless extravagance any proposal to spend a few billions on efforts to combat the menace of over-population. Overfed Americans may feel more vicarious pride in their man on the moon (saving the millions of neurotics and alcoholics, the millions more of worried old folk and unemployed); only there is no telling where those Russians will be by then. Or where we are right now. The crucial decisions about the space program—as about the whole mihtary program— are perforce made by a very few men, in America no less than in Russia, on the basis of secret information not available to the rest of us. "Man" may be getting greater, but men may feel smaller, more helpless, because ever more dependics,

biochemistry, theoretical physics, etc.

11

Symposium on Space ent on decisions in which they have ever less say. Moreover, the essential

would not be comprehensible to most of us anyone know almost nothing of the workings of rockets, have only a dim idea of how the conquest of space was managed, and I cannot judge the program in terms either of scientific value or of possible military necessity; I must depend on the judgment of scientists I respect. And though such dependence on authority is nothing new in history, it points to a cost of civilization that has grown much heavier in our technical information

way.

I

for

massive technological

civilization,

and that may

intensify the individual's

so much more than the how much better they knew their little world than we can ever hope to know ours: knew their fellows, their tools, their status, their traditions, their gods, their magic— just who they were, where they stood, what they were up against, how they had to behave, when and why they had to submit. In the immense complexity and confusion of our society we have to trust to our experts, while we know that they are fallible mortals, that about economic, social, and political problems they never can agree, and that finally we are all in feeling of insignificance or impotence.

prehistoric villagers,

the

same

we may

Knowing

forget

boat, in uncharted seas, under perpetually stormy skies.

In particular the conquest of space points to the

terrific, irreversible,

modern technology. Even apart from the compulsions Cold War, there is no calling a halt to it; the momentum that technological development has gained makes it almost automatic, at once ultra-dynamic and oddly rigid. It dictates space programs just as it dictates the mechanization of everything possible. Likewise it requires our immense social machinery, the giant organizations in both business and government, and keeps on impelling the tendency for everything to grow bigger— except all the little men in or under the organizations. Technology remains the plainest source of the power and the pride of modern man, the growing stature of the race collectively, and needless to add, it is now absolutely indispensable to the maintenance of our civilization, with its enormously increased population; but for this reason it threatens to become ever more an end than a means, more the master than the servant of men, reducing human beings to mere functions in a regimented process, interchangeable cogs suitably identified by punch cards. The whole drive is perfectly symbolized by the latest development, automation—itself a rather dreadful word, emphasizing the mechanical, automatic aspects of the process. It is said that the complicated machinery being designed for space research should in time prove useful for other purposes, introduce a new era of automation. Some Americans may be dismayed by the news that most likely we will not send men to Mars after all; machines will be able to do all the necessary exploration, while computing machines will digest their reports. Other Americans are beginning to worry over the millions of men at home who will be irresistible drive of

of the

12

Herbert

J.

Mullet

BOATMEN ON THE YANGTZE RIVER world is unlikely to rejoice in the high estate of man while the overwhelming majority of men live in a primitive state

The

rest of the

deprived of their jobs,

any

case,

we

left

with useless

skills,

or without functions. In

must expect automation. Efficiency demands

it.

of a country spent on the space program, The tendency exemplify the compulsive schoolrooms, slums and short on in

billions

to sacrifice basic

human needs

chanical eflBciency.

on

this earth,

They

call

for the sake of material

still

full

power and me-

attention to an apparent emptiness of

a kind of purposelessness beneath the tremendous

to achieve practical purposes in a society in

wisdom. As Robert Hutchins observed,

it

life

effort

which know-how passes

for

appears that Americans can-

not tell where they are going or how well they are doing until they have been assured that they are keeping up with the Russians, or at least not 13

Symposium on Space So one may wonder again about what they thought excitement over the feats of their astronauts. How capacity do they have for reflection, wonder, awe? For appre-

falling too far behind.

and

felt after

much

the

initial

ciation of the old-fashioned values of civility

and enlightenment, the

ends to which science was at first hailed as a means? They cannot be expected to understand modern science, but do they cherish spiritual

the scientific

spirit,

of creativity apart

comes back

the pursuit of truth for

from

all

its

thought of whether

to the old question

about our brave

own it

sake?

Or

the joys

"pays"? In short, one

new

world:

What

kind

of people in it?^

The many millions who were on their TV sets spend many more hours a week staring at trivial or tawdry programs. Their favorite pastimes suggest a dependence on mechanical aids for passing the time, or for escaping boredom, escaping as well the effort of thought, the source of man's dignity. But most depressing is the judgment of those who are supposed to know Americans best— the advertisers, the controllers of the mass media. Their sales methods scarcely imply that the ordinary American is a mature, rational, responsible person. Often they treat him as a simple dope, who will be impressed by the patently insincere testimonials of beauty queens, ballplayers, and other such persons of distinction. Otherwise they exploit chiefly his fear of not keeping up with the Joneses, or not being well adjusted to other unthinking Americans. And when they boast of him (if only because he is a faithful consumer), The

plainest evidence

is

not heartening.

thrilled as they followed the astronauts

they are likely to betray their

own low

standards of

human

dignity or

Thus one New York executive, in the course of a defense Madison Avenue, proudly reported that Americans spend three billion dollars a year on culture. In other words, they spend less than one per cent of the national income on a primary means to self-enlargement, or simply to the possession of a real self, a mind of one's own. Now they are spending more on their space program, while their Congress refused to appropriate a few millions for the maintenance of a cultural center in the nation's capital. The exploration of outer space is more important stature.

of

than the enrichment of inner

lives.

one must add, cannot be met by the kind of crash program that may do for technological purposes. Since eminent scientists have called for the creation of a "science of survival," I assume that the rest of us ought to know that strictly there can be no such science. Together with all possible wisdom and good will, we should of course try to bring all available knowledge to bear on our problems; but in wisdom we should never hope to come up with scientific solutions. To All such problems,

2 "O brave new world, That has such people in

't"

(Shakespeare, The Tempest, Vol. 27, p. 547a).

14

Herbert

J.

Muller

PHILHABMONIC HALL AT LINCOLN CENTER, NEW YORK CITY Americans

.

.

.

spend

less

than one per cent of the national income on a primary means

to self-enlargement, or simply to the possession of a real self, a

mind

of one's

own

such a pooling of knowledge a "science" may well be good policy, means of impressing both government and public. It might also confirm the popular misunderstanding of science as a form of guaranteed call

as a

magic, the popular ignorance of the limits of science, and the confusions that have

marked

its

whole history and that now generate much pseudo-

science.

Nevertheless, scientists.

I

should emphasize chiefly the high seriousness of these

Since the unleashing of nuclear power, no profession has dis-

played a more urgent sense of social responsibility. Scientists are cooperating with their fellows all over the world, in the name of duty to "mankind"— a concept that spread in the Age of Enlightenment, and that has

become more meaningful than

it

when men knew human race. Their about what men must

ever could be

nothing about most of the globe or the history of the international conferences

do

in

which the "must"

may

issue statements

glides too easily into "will," but even so they

recall us to the exceptionally live sense of possibility that

guishes our society.

lenge"— a word that called for

upon

we

to rise to

no past society

still

distin-

symbolized by the characteristic word "chalhave reason to be weary of, as every day we are

It is

some challenge, but

in crisis, to

my

that

is

none the

less significant;

knowledge, kept ringing with such a

word. This in turn brings up the novel idea of progress, the source of 15

Symposium on Space our feeling of greater potentiality. It brings me back to the positive achievements from which our problems have arisen, and which I think too

many

now

writers

general, In ical. It

disparage or ignore.

criticism of

is

American

too easy, or at least

life

has

much

itself

exact justice, perhaps even simple justice. As

broad

we may

generalities,

who

pretty

we

mechan-

perforce deal in very

forget that the "ordinary American"

abstraction, like the sociological monster

(the one

become

easier than doing anything like

known

has two and one-half children).

is

a pure

as the "average It

man"

conceals the innum-

erable diflFerent kinds of Americans, with their innumerable varieties

and

degrees of interest, aptitude, and aspiration, which incidentally nourish enough independence of spirit to keep advertisers worried. Likewise the standard complaints of our "standardized mass society" obscure

its

unparalleled heterogeneity and mobility, the remarkable range of choice

and opportunity

it oflFers,

including ample provision for

In this pluralistic society intellectuals

may

still

fairly

its

many

critics.

complain of the

popular disposition to measure stature chiefly by success in business (even a man's "worth" by how many dollars he possesses), and of the common hostility to them as highbrows, eggheads, pinkoes; but they might be flattered even by this hostility, which implies that they have

some

real influence. As a class they in fact have a considerably larger audience than their fellows had in past societies, and nowhere do they get more financial support than they get in America. Voices crying in the modern wilderness may be subsidized by foundations, broadcast in

paperbacks. They tial

may

cry cliches

if

only because they have so substan-

and ready an audience.

In particular, of our history.

it is

We

necessary to keep an eye on the basic ambiguities

are dealing with the inescapable costs of real goods,

beginning with a material well-being that we too easily take for granted. Few of us would change places with the illiterate, poverty-stricken peasants who throughout history, as in "spiritual" India today, have made

up the great bulk of mankind. We should now add that much of their more intimate knowledge of their world was illusion or fearful superstition, and that their magic was less effective than our technology, which today all the rest of the world is eager to adopt. We have then to pay a price as well for all our scientific knowledge of man and his world, as I indicated at the outset, and especially for our fuller, more acute self-consciousness, which can be as painful as it is fruitful. Our pains are in part growing pains, due to a real growth in stature; for in the long view, man's history has in some fundamental respects unquestionably involved a progress, intellectual as well as material— even religious,

if

emerged

we have any

respect for the so-called higher religions that

late in his history. Since the rise of

16

modem

science and the

Herbert

J.

Muller

we tend to regard as intolerable many once were taken as a matter of course, and in general to judge our society in the light of higher expectations than men ever entertained

attendant growth of free societies, evils that

Among other things, we are demanding more of that "ordinary" man, who in the past was expected only to toil and to obey. The ordinary, conventional, routine life— the kind of life that almost all men have lived at all times and that can be decent enough— now strikes many before.

writers as simply dreary, indecent, almost inhuman.

As for the specific problems I have touched on, I do not for a moment wish to minimize their gravity, especially because there is no sure-fire solution for them; but again I see some need of discounting fashionable attitudes. Angst has become a rage, almost a cult. At literary gatherings I have heard other writers and thinkers dismissed with a single sentence —"He doesn't suffer from anxiety"; so I gather that anxiety is the badge of intellectual responsibility, if not of spiritual health. At the same time, I

The plight of the sensitive commonly made more grievous by

get an impression of a good deal of self-pity.

man

in the dreadful

modem

world

is

sentimentality over simplified, idealized views of the past.

It

seems

necessary to remark that one can find plenty of signs of anxiety in the

"golden ages," such as Periclean Athens, the Renaissance, the Elizabe-

than Age, and the Age of Louis XIV, and above all in the Middle Ages, the "Age of Faith." From Dante on, Europe has never lacked for writers

who

believed that their society was

As one who

is

damned

or

doomed.

not confident of the future and has not the faintest de-

the moon, but is still proud to be a member of the human even pleased to have hved in this era, I venture the commonplace that we perforce keep living on the assumption that our world may not end, and we might better go on thinking of the menaces as "challenges." There remains the possibihty that we are living in the dawn of a new era, in which man might measure up to his scientific and technological achievements, master the One World created by these achievements. The extraordinary problems we face have called out as extraordinary creative responses. Aware of the grave shortcomings of the United Nations, sire to fly to

race,

we may

forget that

the degree of lize

its

much more

surprising in a historical perspective

success, as for the

what had been only a dream

first

of

time

some

men

visionaries.

The many

tional congresses of intellectuals are likewise as novel in their

concern for

human

rights, the

is

are attempting to reainterna-

common

once revolutionary principle of the Rights

may seem immediately, they accentuate the fact that to every problem we bring intellectual as well as material resources beyond the ken of men in the past, and first of all a clearer, of

Man. However

fuller

futile

they

awareness of both problem and possibility, a habit of efforts at Hence every reason for alarm stirs widespread alarm,

rational control.

which may or may not be

effective,

but in any case gives some reason for 17

Symposium on Space

The growing concern over the massive pressures to conformity, for example, might remind us that no previous society ever worried so much

hope.

over such pressures; for until recent centuries thinkers were generally

unconcerned about threats to individuality, if aware of them at all, and were as generally disposed to prize conformity in all ordinary men. this dual view, Inrange possibilities

finally, I

indulge in some speculation about the long-

of the exploration of space. Although not qualified

to speak of the scientific prospects,

have heard expressed by planet of unimaginably science fiction

I

could appreciate the excitement

I

on another difiPerent forms of life— and their resentment of writers who keep imagining creatures superficially fanbiologists over the possible discovery

but basically like ourselves. More remote, I should think, are the communicating by radio signal with other beings in outer space; yet nuclear physicists are taking such possibilities quite seriously, even going so far as to design a formula for sending out pictures of our life. (Professor Philip Morrison, author of the formula, thinks it "very probable" that some community in our galaxy is communicating over vast tastic

possibilities of

and waiting

distances

know

that there

ceivably

more

may

to

add our earth

to

its

well be other beings

intelligent than we.

mailing

all

list.)

At

least

we

over the universe, con-

Given the enormous number of

stars,

the mathematical chances are that the combination of physical condi-

made possible the emergence of life on our planet has occurred on some millions of planets, and ours is a relatively young one. Such probabilities are strong enough to force a question of some immediate tions that

man— a question that is already being pondered by religious thinkers, such as Paul Tillich, and that recalls the ambiguous consequences of the rise of science. Briefly, what comes of the Christian view that the key to the meaning of life was the appearance on earth of Christ, "the Lord of the universe"? Did he perhaps appear on other planets millions of years before man evolved? Or is he only a local religious symbol of a divinity better apprehended by beings elsewhere, possibly beings who were not cursed by original sin? Hindus might suggest that their concept of an immanent God or World Soul is better suited than a personal God for such multifarious cosmic purposes, and might remind Christians that they pertinence for the stature of

still a small minority on this earth. A skeptic might add that more advanced beings may well have outgrown the need of religion, if they

are

ever

knew

it

at

all.

Presumably, simple believers will be dismayed by such questions, which their Bible hardly prepares them for. Thoughtful men may feel more keenly the insignificance of man's relatively brief history, on an undistinguished planet hardly worthy of special divine attention; or they

may

recall Carlyle's

remark

as

he gazed 18

at the stars:

"A sad

spectacle!

Herbert If

J.

Muller

they be inhabited, what a scope for folly and

evil; if

they be not in-

habited,

what a waste

scientific

conquest of time and space a healthy challenge to religion, and

of space!" Paul Tillich, however, considers the

concludes that Christianity cannot afford to withdraw into swers:

it

too must dare to ask

new

its

old an-

questions, to transcend our earth

our history, "even our Christianity."

I

and

should think that believers might

once exalted and humbled by the thought that God has suitably populated some other of the billions of planets, since otherwise the feel at

immensity of the universe might seem pointless. Unbelievers might reman is not so lonely after all in a cosmos made richer, grander, by other forms of life throughout vast reaches once thought cold and dead. All might be edified by the old story of the poet

joice in the thought that

who was

told that astronomically speaking,

replied: "Astronomically speaking,

Returning to

this earth,

man may end

man

we have

is

man was

insignificant.

He

the astronomer."

always to face the all-too-real possi-

Few will rejoice at the thought that crowning evidence of his Godlike power and stature—he is now able to do on his own what it once took God to do with a flood. Religion, let us add, can tell us nothing for certain about his immediate prospects on earth. Nor can science; it can only give us warnings about the wonderful, awful powers it continues to increase. Even the leaders of Russia —seemingly the most confident men today, the proudest of modern man's stature— acknowledge that a nuclear war might prevent the happy ending guaranteed by their Marxist gospel. Yet such uncertainty always inbility that

his history.

this is

volves the real possibility that avert

it

men may

avert catastrophe.

They may

directly out of simple fear, a sign of their littleness, but in part

too because of their qualities of greatness— intellectual, moral, spiritual.

Or just because of the simplest paradox of the human know they are going to die and yet go on living as if

spirit:

that all

men

they weren't, or go

on planting, making, creating things to outlive them, maybe daring or dying in order to win a mortal fame, and now maybe thrilling at the thought of conquering New Worlds instead of merely a new continent; though whatever their stature, they will end in a plot of earth as small as that which covered the bones of their nameless, prehistoric, magichaunted ancestors.

19

ALDOUS HUXLEY,

world-famous

born

in

Surrey,

in

T. H. Huxley.

England,

Educated

at

1894,

essayist

novelist,

the

grandson

and

the

of

was

critic,

great

biologist

Eton College and Oxford University, he began

his literary career as a poet, but soon turned to writing novels.

He

has written

more than a dozen novels, including Antic Hay, Point Counter Point (probably his

most widely read early work), and Brave

of a scientific "utopia." is

now

living in

interested

him

is

in

He

New

World, a frightening picture

emigrated to the United States in the 1930's, and

southern California. For

Eastern philosophy and

many

years he has been deeply

mysticism,

evident in several of his later novels and

has participated in

and

their

essays.

influence

More

experiments with "mind-changing" drugs.

upon

recently,

He

he

has dis-

cussed these experiences and their implications in The Doors of Perception and

Heaven and

Hell.

Among

his latest

works are Brave

Island, a study in "positive utopianism."

New World

Revisited and

man's conquest of space increased or diminished HasThese ten simple words are pregnant with almost

as

his stature?"

many major

problems in semantics. First of all, who or what is the "man" whose conquest of space is under discussion? The word "man" stands, in different contexts, for at least three distinct entities. Sometimes it stands for the species as a whole—for all the three thousand million specimens

Homo

of

pected

sapiens at present inhabiting our planet, and confidently ex-

(unless

something extraordinarily bad or miraculously good less than forty

should happen in the interval ) to double their numbers in years. In other contexts

"man" denotes the product

of acculturation—

the symbol-manipulating, tradition-following, tool-using

Homo

And

faber and

loquax of anthropology and history. Western Man, Oriental Man,

Man, Christian Man, Post-Historic Man— for some come trippingly oflF innumerable tongues. the word "man" may stand for the human individual, male or

Modern Man, years

Homo

Primitive

now such

finally

phrases have

female, black, white, or yellow, the psycho-physical organism that actually does the living, the procreating,

we

are

now

talking about

is

and the dying. "Man"— and what

the unique, unrepeatable person,

who may

Gautama Buddha, like Newton or the homme moyen sensuel or the village idiot. "Man"— and now we have entered the subjective world and are naming the locus one of the three billion loci of unshareably private experiences. "Man"— and we are back again in a relatively public universe, recommending virtue to an inheritor of antisocial instincts, and preaching sweet reason to a compound of id, ego, behave

like Hitler or

(

and superego, which

is

particular culture into

which

Many

at

)

once the beneficiary and the victim of the it happens to have been bom.

most powerfully persuasive effects of theoand historico-philosophical literature are obtained by enunciating huge generalizations about "man," arguing from these propositions as though they were self-evident major premises, and logical,

of the choicest, the

ethico-prophetic,

triumphantly reaching foregone conclusions— all without informing the reader (for that would spoil everything) in which sense, at any given stage of the argument, the

use of double

talk,

any

word "man"

skillful

is

being used. By

this systematic

writer can easily arrive at whatever meta-

may wish

to reach. People who sprinkle Anglo-Saxon scatology or pornography are prosecuted. But, as a matter of plain historical fact, unambiguous four-letter smut has done incomparably less harm in the world than the studied ambiguous use of such three-letter multi-purpose words

physical or ethical destination he

their prose with the monosyllables of

21

Symposium on Space "man" and "god," or that grand five-letter heretic-burner and crusadestarter, "Truth"— with the largest possible capital T. In which of its meanings, we now inquire, is the word "man" being as

used in our question about the effects on "man's stature" of "man's conquest of space"? There is nothing in the question itself to indicate which kind of "man" is being talked about. But we may assume, I think, that all three principal meanings of the word are involved. If space has in fact been "conquered," the conquest is clearly the work of acculturated man. What in fact has happened is that a very small number of Western scientists

and

technologists, using all the

enormous resources

of a

urban-industrial society, has achieved certain results, which to call the "conquest of space."

Up

we

modern choose

to the present these achievements

have been of practical significance only to a tiny handful of human beings. Neither "man," the species, nor "man," the beneficiary and victim of culture, nor yet "man," the psycho-physical organism, unique person, and locus of unshareable experiences, has as yet been discernibly affected by the exploits of Gagarin and Glenn, the collective triumphs of rocketry, guidance systems, and space medicine. These byproducts of the armament race have neither increased nor diminished the probability of nuclear war. Nor have they, as yet, contributed to human well-being or to human ill-being in other contexts than that of war. But perhaps at some future date the achievements of the engineers and scientists may be of real consequence to "man," in all the senses of that amIt will be our task, in a later paragraph, to consider some ways in which the generic, cultural, and personal statures of "man" may be increased or diminished by tomorrow's more far-reaching "conquest of space." Meanwhile, let us look a little more closely into the meaning of this suspiciously picturesque phrase.

biguous word. of the

Inter- and intra-specific conflict in the service of the instincts is as old as life itself. But exclusively intra-specific conflict, socially organized as war, justified as economic policy, and sanctified as patriotism or a crusade— this is a strictly human invention, coeval with civilization, and a by-product of acculturated man's capacity to create and worship symbols, to hypnotize himself with his own verbiage, to rationalize his ugliest passions, and then to objectify his rationalizations as gods, goals, or ideals. Metaphors drawn from war turn up in the most unexpected contexts and bear witness to the fact that, precisely because he is sapiens, faber, and loquax, acculturated man is also (and up to the present in-

Homo bellicosus. Thus, a religion professedly of love and spirinwardness gets embodied in a Church Militant. This Church Militant prays collectively to a God of Battles, recruits Christian Soldiers and

escapably ) itual

organizes

command

them

Armies and Companies Turning from the religious

in Salvation

of Generals.

22

of Jesus to the

under the intellectual

Aldous Huxley

Socially organized

and a by-product

war

is

a strictly

human

to hypnotize himself

field,

we

invention, coeval with civilization

of acculturated man's capacity to create

with his

find historians talking of the

own

march

and worship symbols,

verbiage

of ideas, the overthrow of

some system of philosophy, say, or medicine or astronomy, and the vicsome other system. And within another scientific and techno-

tory of logical

frame of reference

we

are treated to loud boasts about man's

conquest of nature, a special case of which with which we are presently concerned.

is

that conquest of space

In the ethical system of the Greeks, hubris— the overweening

bump-

tiousness of individuals or groups in their dealings with other

human

beings or with the natural order— was regarded as a very grave and, since

it

invited condign punishment, an extremely dangerous form of

delinquency.

Monotheism

de-sanctified

while hubris in relation to one's fellow in relation to the

Nature, with the result that,

man was

non-human environment

still

condemned, hubris

ceased, under the

new

dis-

pensation, to be regarded as a sacrilege or a breach of the moral code.

And even

today,

when

the consequences of our destructive bumptious-

ness are threatening, through erosion, through deforestation

and

soil

exhaustion, through the progressive pollution and depletion of water resources, to render further

human

progress ever

more

difficult,

perhaps

today the essential wickedness of man's inhumanity to Nature remains unrecognized by the official in a relatively short time impossible— even

spokesmen

of morality

and

religion,

23

by

practically

everyone, indeed,

Man, the species, is now living as a parasite upon an earth which acculturated man is in the process of conquering to the limit

except a few conservationists and ecologists. Acculturated man's "conquest of nature" goes forward at an accelerating pace— a conquest, un-

most ruthless imperialist exploiters

fortunately, analogous to that of the of the colonial period.

Man, the

an earth which acculturated limit—and the limit to

kill

is

he

man

is

all

is

now

living as a parasite

in the process of

upon

conquering to the

total destruction. Intelligent parasites take care not

their hosts; unintelligent parasites

murder and, destroying ing

species,

their

own food

push

their greed to the point of

supply,

commit

suicide. Boast-

the while of his prowess as a conqueror, but behaving, while

hookworm, man, engaged in murdering his host. It is still possible for him to give up his suicidal vampirism and to establish a symbiotic relationship with his natural environment— still possible, but admittedly (with human numbers threatening to double in boasts, less intelligently than the flea or even the

the acculturated parasite,

less

is

than forty years) very

now

busily

diflBcult.

If this

very

diflBcult

choice

is

not

made, made soon, and made successfully, acculturated man's misdirected cleverness may conquer nature too thoroughly for the survival of his own high culture, perhaps even for the survival of man, the species. 24

Aldous Huxley

The

but wholly inappropriate, military metaphor in man has chosen to speak of his parasitic relationship to our planet is now being used in relation to Russian and American successes in launching artificial satellites and putting astronauts into orbit. Space may well be infinite; and, even if finite, the universe is unimaginably vast. In a world where there are galaxies separated from our own by a distance of six billion light-years, any talk by rocket enthusiasts about "man's conquest of space" seems a trifle silly. Men will land on the moon within the next few years, and within a generation, no doubt, will land on Mars. If there is life on Mars, every round trip picturesque,

terms of which acculturated

by an astronaut

will involve grave biological dangers for all concerned.

Micro-organisms, to which living things on earth possess no inherited or acquired immunity, may be brought back from our sister planet. Conversely, living things

on Mars

may succumb

introduced by visitors from Earth. The

to the viruses

fruits of this first

and bacteria

and, in relation

whole universe, insignificant "conquest of space" might easily prove to be sudden and irreparable disaster for two biological systems, developed through three or four thousand million years of evolution. to the

And

same sort of risks would be run by earthlings visiting any life-supporting globe in any part of the universe. Acculturated man is immensely clever, and his representatives will soon be able to land an astronaut on another planet and bring him back alive. By journalists and political propagandists, this future ability has been nicknamed "the conquest of space." In what way will this "conof course the

quest of space" affect "man's stature"? Obviously, if the coming and going between planets should result in a biological disaster to

human

beings or their principal sources of

nourishment, the stature of man, the species, would be diminished— conceivably to zero. But the worst

may

never happen. Let us assume, for the made under

sake of argument, that round trips to other planets can be

completely aseptic conditions will turn out to

be immune

or, alternatively, that terrestrial

to extra-terrestrial bacteria

and

organisms viruses. In

how will the "conquest of space" affect the stature of man, the man, the product and producer of culture, and man, the unique individual and locus of unshareable experiences?

this event,

species,

Preoccupied as they are with

new worlds

Age

to conquer, the rocket en-

much-touted Space Age

thusiasts are apt to forget that their

is

also the

Exploding Populations. Like unintelligent parasites draining the lifeblood of their host, three thousand millions of human beings now live, most of them very poorly, on the surface of our planet. By the end of the twentieth century there will be, in all probability, six thousand millions, desperately trying to extract twice as much food and, if industrialization becomes general, four times as much water and at least ten times as much fossil fuel and metallic ore as are being extracted from of

25

The

rocket enthusiasts are apt to forget that their much-touted Space the Age of Exphding Populations

the earth today. is

called

down

When

Age

is

also

the attention of our high-flying rocket enthusiasts

to these simple, grisly facts of terrestrial arithmetic, they

the demographic problem of man, the species, together the social, political, and economic problems stemming from the

airily insist that

with

all

enormous and accelerating increase very simply.

How? By

shooting

in

t\\'0

human members, can be

solved

or three billion people into space

and

telling them to go and colonize some other planet. This method of increasing the stature of man, the species, by peopling other worlds with the overplus of this world's numbers was proposed many years ago by Professor J. B. S. Haldane in his Possible Worlds and

again in the Last and First Men of Olaf Stapledon. Inasmuch as their authors thought in terms of startling genetic changes and enormous

may be described as Evolutionary Utopias. Given enough time, evolution can accomplish practically anything. In the course of the last three or four billion years it has performed the almost infinitely improbable feat of developing a human being out of a giant molecule. In the future, directed by human intelligence, it might perform hardly less improbable feats in considerably shorter periods of time. But by the standards of human history, even these shorter periods will be extremely long. In the Evolutionary Utopias of Haldane and lapses of time, these books

Stapledon many thousands, even millions, of years were required for the development, by controlled breeding, of new sub-races of human beings capable of surviving and reproducing themselves in the forbidding en-

26

Aldous Huxley vironments of other planets. The rocket enthusiasts seem to imagine that migration to some wholly alien world could be undertaken, within the so, by men and women in no way different, genfrom ourselves. Being engineers and not life scientists,

next hundred years or etically speaking,

they are pretty certainly mistaken in this matter. In the present context it is

tical

the Utopian dreamers of biological dreams, not the so-called "prac-

who make

men,"

sense.

And even

in

relation to such an easily

calculable factor as expense, the rocket enthusiasts are wildly unrealistic.

To land

thousand adequately equipped colonists on ancombined budgets of the U.S.A. physically, financially, and if were it and the U.S.S.R. Morever, even politically feasible to fire off whole boatloads of emigrants into outer space, would the forcible displacement of, say, five hundred million uprooted men and women solve the primary demographic problem, or any as

other planet

few as would

five

cost several times the

of the related social, political,

and economic problems, now confronting

us? During the nineteenth century millions of Europeans emigrated to the New World; but Europe's political and economic problems were not thereby eliminated, and Europe's population went on steadily in-

though nothing out of the ordinary had happened. There seems to be no good reason for supposing that emigration to Mars will do more for Earth as a whole than emigration to the Americas and the Antipodes did for nineteenth-century Europe. We see, then, that our "conquest of space" is a conquest only in some creasing, as

picturesquely Pickwickian sense. the near future, that man,

It

seems very unlikely,

at

the species, will increase his stature

least

in

by be-

coming a cosmic imperialist. Moreover, even if cosmic imperialism should ever be within our power, the colonization of other planets will bring no automatic solution to this planet's demographic, political, and economic problems. Man, the species, might add a few cubits to his stature; but the stature of acculturated man, of the creature who, for all these centuries, has been trying to make a go of collective living, will probably remain as low as it has been in the past and is today.

word

preceding paragraphs, the Ina the word with a meaning expressible the species, should ever

"stature" has

become a cosmic number and

increase in proportion to the

been treated as Thus, if man,

in concrete terms.

imperialist, his stature will size of his extra-terrestrial

And if, in spite of the extra-terrestrial colonies, the stature of acculturated man should fail to increase, it will be because of some obcolonies.

servable and even measurable failure to solve the age-old problems of collective living here

stature"

is

on earth. But the meaning of the phrase "man's

not always expressible in concrete and measurable terms.

It

may, and in fact often does, refer to a merely notional entity— the image which acculturated man forms of himself, when he starts to philosophize, 27

Symposium on Space

In a totemistic, magic-practicing and fertility-worshiping society, "man" has the same stature as all the other denizens of a world in which everything is simultaneously natural and supernatural

way, the phrase "man's stature" stands for the fancies and human nature current at any given time and place. Thus, in a totemistic, magic-practicing, and fertihty-worshiping society, "man"

Used

in this

behefs about

(in all the senses of that

word) has the same

denizens of a world in which everything supernatural.

With the emergence

is

stature as all the other

simultaneously natural and

of self-consciousness

comes a change

man separates himself from he now assigns himself is radically to every other kind of creature. He

in metaphysical perspective. Accultm^ated

the rest of nature, and the stature different

from the stature assigned

sees himself as a

member

masterpiece of a Creator

of a species unlike all other species, the final

who

has framed the inferior world of nature and with an eye to man's moral and spiritual education. In medieval Christendom "man's stature"—the current notions, in other words, about human nature and its place in the universe— was at once gigantic and dwarfish. Man, the species, man, the beneficiary and victim of culture, man, the unique individual and locus of unshareable for man's benefit

28

Aldous Huxley experiences,

was the

central figure in a tiny spherical cosmos, constructed

expressly for the education of

human

beings and administered by a

supernatural dyarchy, with one seat of government in heaven and an-

underground, in hell. In this stuffy little all-too-human universe, words did not stand for given things; on the contrary, things stood for given words— words in the Bible or in one of the treatises of Aristotle. Nothing was studied for its own sake, but only for the sake of what it was supposed symbolically to signify. Projected into the external world, reminiscences of Roman law, Greek metaphysics, Pauline theology, Arabian astronomy, and old wives' tales of magic were rediscovered "out there" and triumphantly recognized as cosmic facts. Inasmuch as medieval man had created a world in the image of his own culturally conditioned mind, his "stature" seemed heroic. But this self-image was heroic only in relation to the windowless, artificially lighted echo-chamber which busy metaphysicians had scooped out of the totally mysterious datum of a cosmos probably infinitely extended and perhaps indefinitely other,

self-renewing. In relation to this other universe— the universe that has

gradually revealed

itself to later

observers— the "stature" of medieval

man

shrinks from the heroic to the bumptiously absurd. But, like the accul-

turated man of every other period and place, Europe's medieval man was something more and other than the victim-beneficiary of the locally current thought patterns. Medieval man was also man, the psychophysical organism, the unique person and locus of unshareable experiences. As such, he could always break out of the haunted echo-chamber that he had been taught to regard as the universe— could always escape from his notional prison into the wordless freedom of instinct and animality on the one hand, of mystical spirituality on the other. For the many there were sex, strong drink, and the recurrent orgies of a paganism that obstinately refused to die; and for the few there was the

way

of contemplation, the flight of the alone to the Alone.

What

passed

might be no more than a grotesque projection of organized ignorance bumptiously proclaiming that it was in possession of absolute Truth; but above and parallel with his notional world stretched for the universe

the boundless, unverbalized realities of unshareable subjective experience.

by

The

victim-beneficiaries of medieval culture retained their sanity

periodically de-conditioning themselves

while, centers of pure receptivity,

open

and becoming,

for a little

to the dark gods, or the gods

of light, or to both sets of deities alternately or even simultaneously.

What was done by

the prisoners of medieval European culture has been being done, by the victim-beneficiaries of every other culture. A totally acculturated man would be a monster. Sanity and humanity can be maintained only by regular escapes from culture into

done, and

is still

the unconsciousness of sleep, and by occasional conscious escapes into

"peak experiences" on the animal, aesthetic, or mystical

29

levels.

Measured

^ ^ S^^9 m1 -^-^^.-.jtti

M

!^SHK^ Fh^Hh

^^^B^S^

^^HrV' wBt^ :;^^A

^^i^^^ S^if^^H

wJ^^P^v^ Py/'S^lB'; ^QL ^^^R^P ^vviin mWf^h lajj / f-"JSf \B S«\^'^^ ^^^\w3 ^

t-' that has grown out of modem science. Every progress in science in the last decades, from the moment it was absorbed far the field of strictly scientific

and thus introduced into the factual world where we live our everyday lives, has brought with it a veritable avalanche of fabulous instruments and ever more ingenious machinery. All of this makes it more unlikely every day that man will encounter anything in the world around him that is not man-made and hence is not, in the last analysis, he himself in a different disguise. The astronaut, shot into outer space

into technology

22 Ibid., p. 24. 23 Heisenberg, The Physicist's Conception of Nature (New York: Harcourt, Brace &Co., 1958), p. 24.

45

Symposium on Space and imprisoned

in

his

instrument-ridden capsule where each actual

physical encounter with his surroundings

would

spell

immediate death,

might well be taken as the symbolic incarnation of Heisenberg's man— the man who will be the less likely ever to meet anything but himself the more ardently he wishes to eliminate all anthropocentric considerations from his encounter with the non-human world around him. seems to me, that the humanist's concern with man and the stature of man has caught up with the scientist. It is as though the sciences had done what the humanities never could have achieved, namely, to prove demonstrably the validity of this concern. The situation, as it presents itself today, oddly resembles an elaborate verification of a remark by Franz Kafka, written at the very beginning of this development: Man he said, "found the Archimedean point, but

It

is

at this point,

it

he used it against himself; it seems that he was permitted to find it only under this condition." For the conquest of space, the search for a point outside the earth from which it would be possible to unhinge, as it were, the planet itself, is no accidental result of the modem age's science. This was from its very beginnings not a "natural" but a universal science, it was not a physics but an astrophysics which looked upon the earth from a point in the universe. In terms of this development, the attempt to conquer space means that man hopes he will be able to journey to the Archimedean point which he anticipated by sheer force of abstraction and imagination. However, in doing so, he will necessarily lose his advantage. All he can find is the Archimedean point with respect to the earth, but once arrived there and having acquired this absolute power over

he would need a new Archimedean point, and so man can only get lost in the immensity of the only true Archimedean point would be the abso-

his earthly habitat,

ad

infinitum. In other words,

the universe, for lute void

behind the universe.

Yet even

if

man

recognizes that there might be absolute limits to his

it might be wise to suspect such limitations whenever it turns out that the scientist can do more than he is capable of comprehending, and even if he realizes that he cannot "conquer space," but at best make a few discoveries in our solar system, the journey into space and to the Archimedean point with respect to the earth is far from being a harmless or unequivocally triumphant enterprise. It could add to the stature of man inasmuch as man, in distinction from other living things, desires to be at home in a "territory" as large as possible. In that case, he would only take possession of what is his own, although it took him a long time to discover it. These new possessions, like all property, would have to be limited, and once the limit is reached and the limitations established, the new world view which may conceivably grow out of it is likely to be once more geocentric and anthropomorphic,

search for truth and that

46

Hannah Arendt though not in the old sense of the earth being the center of the universe and of man being the highest being there is. It would be geocentric in the sense that the earth, and not the universe, is the center and the home of mortal men, and it would be anthropomorphic in the sense that man

would count his own factual mortality among the elementary conditions under which his scientific efforts are possible at all. At this moment, the prospects for such an entirely beneficial development and solution of the present predicaments of modern science and technology do not look particularly good. We have come to our present capacity to "conquer space" through our new ability to handle nature from a point in the universe outside the earth. For this is what we actually do when we release energy processes that ordinarily go on only in the sun, or

attempt to

initiate in a test

tube the processes of cosmic

evolution, or build machines for the production

unknown

and control

of energies

household of earthly nature. Without as yet actually occupying the point where Archimedes had wished to stand, we have found a way to act on the earth as though we disposed of terrestrial nature from outside, from the point of Einstein's "observer freely poised in space." If we look down from this point upon what is going on on earth in the

and upon the various activities of men, that is, if we apply the Archimedean point to ourselves, then these activities will indeed appear to ourselves as no more than "overt behavior," which we can study with the same methods we use to study the behavior of rats. Seen from a sufficient distance, the cars in which we travel and which we know we built ourselves will look as though they were "as inescapable a part of ourselves as the snail's shell is to its occupant." All our pride in what we can do will disappear into some kind of mutation of the human race; the whole of technology, seen from this point, in fact no longer appears "as the result of a conscious

human

effort to

extend man's material powers, but rather

Under these circumstances, speech and everyday language would indeed be no longer a meaningful utterance that transcends behavior even if it only expresses it, and it would much better be replaced by the extreme and in itself meaningless formalism of mathematical signs. The conquest of space and the science which made it possible have as a large-scale biological process."-*

come est,

know

24

perilously close to this point. If they ever should reach

the stature of of, it

man would

not simply be lowered by

would have been destroyed.

Ibid., pp. 18-19.

47

all

it

in earn-

standards

we

PAUL TILLICH,

considered by

tant theologian of our time,

many

bom

was

to

be the most important Protes-

Starzeddel, Prussia, in

in

1886.

He

studied at several European universities, and received his Doctor of Philosophy

degree from the University of Breslau

World War

I,

In 1933 he

was dismissed from

am Main the

first

he taught

1911. During the period following

leading universities in Germany.

his position

University of Frankfurt

at the

because of his outspoken opposition to the Nazi regime. (He was

non -Jewish professor

to join the faculty of the

he remained

to

be so dismissed.)

He

is

the recipient of

Protestant Era,

in

accepted an invitation

New

York City, where

he has taught at Harvard and the Uni-

as well as other important honors. His

The

He

Union Theological Seminary

until 1954. Since then,

versity of Chicago.

Situation,

in

at several of the

more than a dozen honorary degrees, best-known works are The Religious

and The Courage

completing the third volume of his major

life

to

Be.

At present, he

work, Systematic Theology.

is

be discussed here has two subject The such, and the other space exploration on man

sides;

to

as

view

of himself.

The

first

seems to

one is its

call for a report

is

the

effect

of

eflFect

on man's

about man's condi-

an evaluation of man's stature as a consequence of this distinction cannot be maintained when one goes into the concrete problems which have arisen as an effect of space research and space travel. A decisive part of man's condition, as it is affected by his penetration into the space beyond the gravitational field

tion; the second, for

space exploration. But

of the earth,

is

on the basis of

his self-evaluation

this

achievement.

On

the other hand, conflicting self-evaluations are brought about by the contrast of the negative

and positive

condition. Therefore,

I

effects of

space exploration on man's

intend to deal with the problems of our subject

without any sharp demarcation between the effects of space exploration on the situation of man as such and on his view of himself. present situation the The man since the Renaissance. is

result of

many

would be

It

vent an adequate answer to our question, portant and unique

previous steps.

It

it

may

be,

if

steps

made by Western

unrealistic,

and would pre-

the last step, however im-

were considered in isolation from the and valuations if contem-

leads to a distortion of facts

porary writers overemphasize the uniqueness of the present achievement in

comparison with what has been done and thought before.

The Renaissance was not term

is

the rebirth of the ancient traditions, as the

often misunderstood, but

in all respects— religious,

it

cultural,

was the rebirth of Western society and political— with the help of the

ancient sources of the Mediterranean civilization. In this process the

were transformed in many respects because of the Christian background of the Renaissance. One of the most important transformations was the turn from the Greek contemplative and the medieval selftranscending ideals of life to the active, world-controlHng, and world-

traditions

shaping ideal. This implied a high evaluation of the technical sciences

and the begirming of that fertile interaction between the pure and the applied sciences which immensely contributed— and is still doing so—to the rapid development of both of them. There was little such interaction in Greece, the late ancient world, and the middle ages; it was something

new— not

a repetition, but a rebirth.

One may

express the situation in

three geometrical symbols: the circle, for the fulfillment of

life

and

its

cosmos in classic Greece; the vertical, for the toward what transcends the cosmos, namely, the tran-

potentialities within the

driving of

life

49

Symposium on Space scendent One, the ultimate in being and meaning, in late antiquity and in the middle ages; and the horizontal, for the trend toward the control

and transformation

of the

cosmos

in the service of

Renaissance, Reformation, and Enlightenment.

God

The

or

man

since the

"discovery of the

is the first step of a development which space exploration is the preHminary last step. Both are victories of the horizontal over the circular and the vertical line. The transition from the vertical to the

horizontal" of

horizontal line in the determination of the telos,

the inner aim of

greatly helped

human

by the astronomy

was

existence,

of the Renais-

sance and related "utopian" literature.

The

Copernican astronomy had thrown the earth out of the center of the universe— the least divine of all places— and elevated it to the dignity of a star

same

among

other

stars.

About the

time, a highly influential philosopher,

Cardinal Nicholas of Cusa, taught the im-

manence One of the most important transformations was the turn from the Greek contemplative and the medieval self-transcending ideals of life to the active, world-controlling, and world-shaping

ideal

in

of the infinite within the finite, e.g.,

earth

and man. This raised the

signifi-

cance of everything in the world by making it an expression of the divine life, and it gave impetus to the expectations of a fulfillment of history on this planet.

ture

showed

The "utopian"

visions of a future in

ligious, political,

litera-

which

re-

economic, and technical ele-

ments were united. This also increased the importance of technology pure sciences far above what it had been in Greece and the intermediary periods. Typical of this situation is Leonardo da Vinci, who combined the anticipation of fulfillment in his paintings with empirical studies of natural phenomena and with technical experiments in which, just as today, war techniques played a great role.

in relation to the

In the seventeenth century, the realization of the problems implied in

modern period of Western history increased and found a characteristic expression in Pascal's confrontation of man's smallness with his greatness. Pascal experienced with many of his contemporaries the shock of man's smallness in the universe of Copernican astronomy. At the same time, he experienced in his own work as mathematician and physicist the power of the human mind to penetrate into the calculable structures of nature— man's greatness even in the face of the quantitative vastness of the universe. In Pascal many problems of man's present self-interpretation are anticipated and the human prethese beginnings of the

50

Paul Tillich

dicament in its contradictory character is shown just as we see it today. He asked the question which is most relevant to our problem: What has become, under the control of the horizontal line, of the vertical one— the line toward that which transcends the cosmos? He answered with his famous words which contrast the "God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob" with the "god of the philosophers." (See Pensees, Sect. VH-VHI, Vol. 33, pp. 243b-277b.) Pascal was struggling to save the dimension of the ultimate, which

transcends the greatness as well as the smallness of man.

He

did

it

suc-

cessfully for himself, but the general historical

development

The

followed

the

nineteenth-century

and

evolution,

in

belief

line.

in the eigh-

human

teenth-century belief in the

horizontal

was expressed

horizontal

progress, in

universal

in

the ideologies supporting

the industrial, social, and pohtical revolutions

There were always and classi-

of the last three centuries.

theological, mystical, romanticist, cist

attempts to recover the vertical line or

to return to the circular world

view of

classical

Greece. But the drive toward that which

lies

ahead proved to be stronger than the longing to return to a world in which it was more important to look at the eternal essences of the cosmos than to anticipate a future to be

created by man.

One moval

of the shocks connected with the reof

man and

center was

his earth

basically

from the cosmic

theological.

Since the

biblical literature, as well as its interpretation

BLAISE PASCAL In Pascal many problems of man's present self-interpretation are anticipated,

predicament in

and the human

contradictory character is shown just as we see it today its

during fifteen hundred years of church history,

was based on a world view in which the earth was at the center of the universe, human history was the ultimate aim of the creation of the earth, and the Christ was the center of human history, an urgent question arose:

What

is

the position of

man

God? What is the cosmic significance a whole? Does not the moving of the

in the providential acting of

of the Christ in the universe as

earth out of the center undercut both the central significance of man and the cosmic significance of the Christ? Is not the whole drama of salvation reduced to a series of events happening on a small planet at a particular time without universal significance?

With these problems aheady space exploration started

.

.

alive in the

.

51

Western world, the age

of

Symposium on Space

When men

broke through the gravitational

field of

the earth, the

was naturally astonishment, admiration, and pride. The pride was increased by the national pride of those who achieved the breakthrough, and diminished but not annihilated by the feeling of national humiliation of those who could have achieved it but did not. Yet there was almost no exception to a feehng of astonishment about first

reaction

men's potentialities, hidden until then, but

now

able to explore the transterrestrial space, he

revealed:

is

Man

also able to

is

not only

change the him by

astronomical picture by adding something to what was given to nature.

Admiration was particularly directed to the theoretical and technical

who were

intelhgence of those

responsible for the successful penetration

and to the moral courage of those who risked their hves in actualizing what was a human potentiality and had now become real. A consequence of this admiration was the status of

into the trans-earthly sphere,

(even to those in the enemy wisdom unattainable by most atomic scientists. The emotional power of

heroic pioneers given to the astronauts

camp) and

human

that of bearers of esoteric

beings given to the

is very strong, and not without important sociological These men became symbols which were decisive for the formaa new ideal of human existence. The image of the man who looks

these reactions effects.

tion of

dowTi at the earth, not from heaven but from a cosmic sphere above the

became an

earth,

object of identification

and psychological elevation

to

innumerable people.

The same image unlocked streams and outside the gravitational

inside

though not heavenly (or tion, often wTitten

of imagination

field of

hellish), beings.

by

as a sideline

about encounters

the earth with non-earthly,

The

literature of science

scientists themselves,

well as followed the actual progress of space exploration. But its full

been

development only

after actual

attained. Its real importance

scientific or technical discoveries,

to transcend the realm of tion.

The

divine,

achievements

as

reached

it

in this direction

had

not the occasional anticipation of

but the fulfillment of the desire of

earthbound experiences,

at least in

man

imagina-

so-called "Gothic" novel did this with the help of supranatural,

and demonic interferences

spiritualistic

appeared

is

fic-

preceded

in the natural process of

life,

and the

it through the use of psychic phenomena which unambiguously natural nor unambiguously supra-

novel did

as neither

natural. Science fiction, especially

if

connected with space exploration,

transcends the bondage to earth by imagining encounters with natural

but transterrestrial beings. Mythological as well as psychic supranaturalism are replaced by a transterrestrial naturahsm. The earth is trans-

cended not through something qualitatively

other, but

through a strange

part of something qualitatively the same: the natural universe.

52

Paul Tillich

::/^j&^' i

^

-

if

iZ*^^

^3 1

^

»,

~^^^!a

.1

i

'

^ '

1

A

''-'^

^">

-Wv-;:-

4j^:^:^

'

>%'**'^"''"M=-

^pt^.

'

"the triumph of providence by pietro da cortona The imagined worlds are constructed with elements of earthly experiences, even

At

this

if

these experiences are religious or artistic

point an observation can be

restraining effect on the

made which

should have some

drive toward earth-transcending imaginings

(whether they are called experiences or mere fantasy). The content of is always a combination of elements taken from earthly experience. The "beings" imagined are either glorified or vilified duplications of the human figure (angels and heavenly saints or demons and inmates of hell), or they are combinations of elements by which the human figure is disfigured, as in science fiction. This shows a definite limit to man's capacity for escaping the bondage to the earth, even in

these imaginings

The imagined worlds are constructed with parts or elements of earthly experiences, even if these experiences are religious or imagination.

artistic.

The

last

remark leads

to another, basically negative,

tional reactions to space exploration. It has

somehow

group of emo-

concretely raised

man's awareness of the immensity of the universe and the spatial distances in it. Just the experience of bridging some of these distances and the consequent imagination of bridging more of them has increased man's sensitivity to the actual remoteness of even the nearest solar system beyond our own. The dizziness felt by people in Pascal's time,

53

Symposium on Space

when contemplating

the

empty spaces between the stars, has been inman has pushed not only cognitively but

creased in a period in which

also bodily into these spaces. His anxiety of lostness in a small corner

of the universe,

which has balanced

One

controlling power.

about his controlling power

his pride

since the time of the Eighth Psalm,^ has of the reasons

is

grown with the growth

of the

the loss of the ultimate-trans-

cendent above the greatness and the smallness of man, the answer to the question of man's predicament provided by the psalmist as well as

by

Pascal.

ist

and

The

other,

Pascal,

more

particular reason,

the fact that

is

man

unknown

to

both the psalm-

can use his controlling power for

self-destruction, not only of parts of mankind but of all of it. The intimate relation of space exploration to war preparation has thrown a deep shadow over the emotionally positive reactions to space exploration. This shadow will not recede as long as production of weapons and space exploration are tied up with each other.

describing the emotional

Intific plicit

way.

One

eflFects of space exploration and its scienavoided value judgments except in an im-

however, necessary to make them explicit and to problems connected with our subject.

It is,

some

cuss

we have

precedents,

dis-

ethical

of the effects of the flight into space

down

of looking

at the earth

and the resulting

possibility

a kind of estrangement between

is

man

an "objectification" of the earth for man. The earth is deprived of her "motherly" character, her power of giving birth, of nour-

and

earth,

ishing, of

embracing, of keeping with herself. She becomes a large ma-

to be looked at and considered as totally calculable. The demythologizing the earth, which started with the early philosophers and has continued ever since in the Western world, has terial

body

process

of

been radicalized as never before. itual consequences of this step.

The same terrestrial vertical. less.

is

all

is

the greatest triumph of the horizontal line over the

has gone forward in directions which are practically limit-

However,

problems,

of

this

triumph of the horizontal

which come down

Long before the break through 1

When

I

too early to realize fully the spir-

true of another radicalization: the flight into the trans-

space

Man

It is

raises

serious

spiritual

to the basic question: "For what?"

the gravitational field of the earth, the

look at thy heavens, the

work

of thy fingers, the

moon and

the stars

which thou hast estabUshed;

What

is

man

care for him? Yet thou hast

that thou art mindful of him,

made him

little less

and the son of man that thou dost

than God, and dost crown him with glory and

honor.

Thou

hast given

him dominion over the works

of thy hands; thou has put all

things under his feet.

(Psalm 8:3-6)

54

Paul Tillich

The symptoms

of this emptiness are already conspicuously present forms of indifference, cynicism, and despair

amongst us

in the

question "For what?" had been asked with increasing seriousness and It had been asked in connection with the endless production means: machines, tools, gadgets. It had been asked in connection with the question of the meaning of life. It had been asked when the ways of modern civilization were subject to prophetic criticism, be it in religious, be it in secular terms. If the question is now asked in con-

concern. of

nection with space exploration,

it

becomes more abstract and more

gent than before. For here the horizontal line

is

ur-

almost completely

The task is: to go forward for the sake of going forward, without endlessly, a concrete focus. Of course, one could call the desire to learn more about the cosmic space and about the astronomical bodies

formalized.

in it a concrete aim, but this is only an accidental stop. The desire to go ahead whatever may be encountered gives the real impetus. But as the

exclusive surrender to the vertical line in mysticism leads to the impossibility of expressing anything

and acting

in

any direction, so the

what one could call "forany meaningful content and to complete

exclusive surrender to the horizontal line (in

wardism") leads

to the loss of

The symptoms of this emptiness are already conspicuously present among us in the forms of indifference, cynicism, and despair. Space exploration is not the means of healing it, though it may become emptiness.

a factor in deepening

it

after the first

enthusiasm has evaporated and

the pride about man's almost divine power has receded. These spiritual dangers, however, should never lead to a decision to give up either the

55

Symposium on Space production of technical tools or the attempt to penetrate into the outerterrestrial

space (as the danger of radical mysticism should not lead to

a rejection of the mystical element in every religious experience). For

danger

from actualizing its potentialities. This leads to another problem, connected indirectly with our subject— the problem of the responsibility of the scientist for dangerous possibilities implied in his discoveries. The problem is as old as scholarly thought and was for millennia a source of conflict between the priestly guardians of the holy and the philosophical critics of the traditional beliefs. Even if the sociological, political, and economic causes of such conflicts are taken into account, a genuine tragic element remains. The priest is aware of the catastrophic consequences which criticism of holy traditions can have on the spirit of many people. But the philosopher cannot resign from his vocation to fight for truth, even if sacred beliefs must be destroyed. (This is probably the earliest example of the conflict between the safety of the given and the risk of the new.) The dangers connected with present scientific discoveries refer not to the "salvation of souls," but to the very existence of mankind. But the problem itself and the tragic implications of any possible solution are the same. And the answers should be the same: Tragic consequences of the discovery and expression of truth are no reason for giving up the attempts to discover and the obligation to express truth. The danger for the soul of the believer should not stop the prophet or the reformer from pronouncing truth in the vertical dimension; and the danger of destructive consequences of scientific discoveries (including those in the social sciences and psychology) should not stop the scientists from searching for and expressing truth in the horizontal dimension. It is bad to try to avoid tragedy if the price is avoidance of truth. Therefore, even if space exploration, through its military implications, increased the chances of tragedy, this would not be a reason for stopping it. But such danger would be a powerful motive to balance the horizontal by the vertical line, in order to receive from there weapons against ultimate tragedy. In other words: The answer to the tragic implications of the pursuit of the horizontal line is not to break off this pursuit but to continue it under the criteria coming from the vertical line. But, one asks, is

is

not a reason to prevent

this still a possibility?

life

Has not the power

of the horizontal drive, espe-

what Has not man's image of himself in all Western religions been made obsolete by the horizontal dynamics of the last five hundred years? And does not space exploration say the last word in this respect? There is no doubt that science has undercut the cosmic frame within which man has seen himself in biblical literature and ecclesiastical cially in its scientific expressions,

transcends the universe and

its

almost cut

scientific

off

the relation to

exploration?

teaching, namely, as the bearer of the history of salvation for the uni-

56

Paul Tillich verse, as the only creature in

manifest, and as he

who

whose nature God could become fully own historical end as the

will experience his

end of the universe. Today's astronomy considers the possibility of other meaningful histories in other parts of the universe with other beings in whom God could have become fully manifest, though with another beginning and another end. If space exploration is seen in this context, as the preliminary last step in a long development, one can say that it has changed tremendously the cosmic frame of man's religious self -evaluation. But one must add that it has not changed the divinehuman relationship which had been experienced and symbolically expressed within this frame. Therefore, one can answer the question, whether the dynamics of the horizontal line have cut off the vertical, with a definite No! It is still possible for man to break through the horizontal movement and its tragic implications to the vertical and its power to restrict and transcend tragedy. This "stature and condition" of man has not changed, although the way of its actualization must be different from that of periods in which the horizontal line had not yet shown its driving power. religiously

While

the question of the right of scientific inquiry to go ahead

without considering possibly dangerous consequences was an-

which an answer must be of the income of a nation (or of all nations) should be given to space exploration? A main argument against space exploration is the immense amount of money needed for it, which according to the critics should be used for more important projects, e.g., cancer research or study of the best ways of restricting the increase of the world population. In both cases it is the conquest of bodily evils, disease, and hunger to which priority is given. This seems to be natural from the point of view of justice and agape (the Greek word for the Christian idea of love ) But actually it is neither natural nor was it ever real. Agape demands that the individual be always ready to help the sick and the poor in personal encounters as well as in social projects. And justice demands of society and its political representatives

swered

affirmatively, another question arises to

given. It

is

the economic question:

How much

.

the continuous fight against the structures of social evil in

tural

all its

forms.

agape prohibits the use of economic power for culproduction. Otherwise no human potentiality, neither scientific nor

But neither

justice nor

technical, neither artistic nor ritual, neither educational nor societal,

could ever have been actualized. But they have been actualized at a tremendous cost, and in their development they have produced powerful

weapons against the

structures of evil (mostly without intending to

so). "Priority of needs" cannot

mean

do

that the whole cultural process

should not have been started before the most immediate needs, e.g., conquering hunger and disease, had been satisfied. The term "priority" in

57

the growth knowledge and their inventiveness surpass what can be reached even by highly learned and productive people

Space exploration

of esoteric groups

far

.

the context of our problem

The question

.

contributes greatly to

.

who by

is

.

.

.

their

meaningful only in a particular

situation.

Which demand on the economic reserves of any group has priority at this moment? And if a definite preference is is:

lished, the next question

In

is:

which proportion

shall

social

estab-

economic aid be

given to the preferred project in relation to other important projects? Finally

it

must be considered whether the rejection

of

one project,

e.g.,

the next phase of space exploration, implies the certainty, or at least a real

chance, that one of the alternative projects will be accepted by the responis, for example, highly improbable that the money saved by the stopping of space exploration would become available for cancer research or a restriction of the population explosion. Beyond this,

sible authorities. It

all

these considerations

fest that

would become academic the moment

it is

mani-

space exploration has important military consequences and be-

longs to the realm of competition with a potential enemy.

Then

it

priority over against all projects without direct military importance.

has

The

lies in the hands of those who have knowledge of the relevant and the power to balance the different points of view in terms priorities, on the basis of the actual situation. They cannot be bound by

decision factors

of

a static hierarchy of priorities. Their only criterion should be the

aim of

all political

decisions,

which

human

power judgment of contemporaries, and the later

certainly transcends national

as well as scientific progress. In this they are subject to the their consciences, the criticism of their

judgment of history. But here a conflict

arises,

which

is

cal implications of space exploration:

58

intensified it

by one

of the sociologi-

contributes greatly to a general

Paul Tillich trend in our period, i.e., the growth of esoteric groups who by their knowledge and their inventiveness far surpass what can be reached even by highly learned and productive people, not to speak of the vast majority of human beings. Such elites are esoteric and exclusive, partly by natural selection, partly by public prestige, partly by skillful exercise of their power. An aristocracy of intelligence and will to power has developed in the democratic West as well as in the totalitarian East, and has equalized to a considerable degree the two originally opposite social and political systems. Space exploration in the democratic world strengthens the anti-democratic elements, which are present in every democratic structure. There is a tendency in the average citizen, even if he has a high standing in his profession, to take the decisions about the life of the society to which he belongs as a matter of fate over which he has no influence. This creates a mood which is favorable for the resurgence of religion, but unfavorable for the preservation of a living de-

mocracy. It

may seem remote from

our problem to raise the question of the con-

sequences of space exploration for the ideal of education. But quired by the actual situation.

If

it

is

re-

only those having the most extraordi-

nary mathematical and technical intelligence can reach the top of the hierarchy of theoretical space explorers, and

if

only those having the most

extraordinary bodily and psychological fitness can reach the top of the

hierarchy of practical space explorers,

two

types of

man

it

is

understandable that these

are elevated to the place of ideal types in accordance

with which every individual should be formed, though of approximation.

Such a demand has been made

in

many

degrees

United States, Russian Sputnik. There was, in the

most urgently after the success of the first however, a strong reaction from the side of the humanistically minded educators and also from many students who did not want, or were not able, to undergo the rigors of an education that would bring them to the top of the new hierarchy. But the question is not solved by a transitory balance between the two ways of education or by serious attempts to combine them. The preponderance of the non-humanistic way can hardly be overcome because of the actual structure of modern society and the impact it has on the life of every individual. It drives (often unconsciously) the most gifted and ambitious members of the younger generation into an educational system which guarantees them participation in the higher echelons of the social pyramid. Education cannot resist the solid structure of a social system and its demands on every individual in it. But again: There is no reason for cutting off space exploration or the developments on which it is based. Human nature in its full potentialities is not expressed by the horizontal line. Sooner or later there will be revolt against its predominance, and space exploration will be judged in the light of the meaning of life in all its dimensions. 59

HARRISON BROWN, was

bom

of California

one of America's leading physical scientists, in 1917. He was educated at the University

Wyoming,

in Sheridan,

and Johns Hopkins University, receiving

his

Doctor of Philosophy

1941. In 1942 he joined the group of scientists working on the

degree

in

atomic

bomb

project at the University of Chicago,

and from 1943

he was one of the directors of the atomic research center

at

to 1946,

Oak Ridge,

Tennessee. Since then, he has taught at the Institute for Nuclear Studies in

Cahfomia Institute of Technology. In 1947 he received American Association for the Advancement of Science work on the composition of meteorites. He was the youngest man receive this award. He has written several books, including The Chal-

Chicago and

the annual for his

ever to

at the

award

of the

lenge of Man's Future and The Next

numerous

articles to

The American

Hundred

Years,

and has contributed

such periodicals as Saturday Review, The Nation, and

Scholar.

Man appeared

on the earth about a milHon years ago. Though

his

technological competence has gro\Mi steadily, he has been re-

Now,

stricted to the earth diuring all of that time.

in

our generation, he

moon and the planets, to hand. Immense new vistas have been

has developed the competence to

fly to

the

and study them at first opened to him. He can now learn things which before seemed destined to remain permanently beyond his grasp. This is a prospect which should excite everyone. Those who are not stirred by the thought of man's travobsers^e

eling to the planets are either devoid of curiosity or lack a sense of

human to

destiny.

answer

The

realization that

we may now have

in our

it

the question of extra-terrestrial life should in itself

be

power

sufficient

to spur us on.

Throughout cause of

its

his history,

man

utilitarian value:

has pursued knowledge in large part beit

helps

him

to master nature. \\^hen

we

examine the research which is being done today, we find that the greater part of it is aimed at the achievement of practical goals to win wars, to prolong life, to make money. It is understandable that such research is undertaken, and it is often enormously sophisticated. Yet, in a moral sense, such research is scarcely above the animal level. It is simply an attempt to extend our ancient predatory capabilities and to create pro:

tective devices of increased efficiency against predators.

However, there have always been some men who have held that the its own sake is one of man's most noble characteristics and the one which most distinguishes him from the lower animals. Not to pursue the exploration of space, when it is possible, would therefore be a denial by man of one of his most important attributes. Not to venture to the planets would be a negation of one of life's most noble purposes— understanding ourselves and our origins.

pursuit of knowledge for

can rationally discuss the value of programs aimed at sending men and instruments into outer space, it is essential that we understand the kinds of problems which such programs might help solve.

Before we One

of the

most important

of these

problems

is

that of the origin

and

evolution of our solar system.

Although man,

until

very recently, has been

earthbound, he has

nevertheless succeeded in learning a great deal about our solar system. Using telescopes and other instruments, he has measured the sizes of planets and their satellites. He has learned something about the chemical

compositions and temperatures of planetary atmospheres. By sub-

61

RELATIVE SIZES OF PLANETS SHOWN IN RELATION TO THE SUN Using telescopes and other instruments,

and

man

has measured the sizes of planets

their satellites

which fall upon the earth and physical examination, he has

jecting fragments of interplanetary matter

(meteorites)

to intensive chemical

learned something about the distribution of elements in cosmic matter. He has even been able to determine quite accurately the time at which the earth and meteorites were formed. Naturally, he possesses considerably more information about the earth than he does about other planets, for he has been able to observe it at much closer range. The major facts which have been accumulated, and which any general theory of the origin of the solar system must explain, fall into a most interesting pattern. It has become evident that there are two distinct

groups of planets. The four planets close to the sun are small: Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars. Those farther away from the sun are very large:

and Neptune. The small inner planets are charby high average densities and must therefore be composed primarily of heavy substances such as metal and rock. The large outer planets, by contrast, are characterized by very low densities and must

Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus,

acterized

62

Harrison Brown therefore be

composed primarily

light,

indeed gaseous, sub-

stances. Saturn, for example, could float in water.

The predominant ma-

terials in Jupiter

appear

to

of

\en,-

be hydrogen, helium, methane, ammonia, and

water.

The atmospheres of the two groups of planets differ dramatical!}- from each other. Mercur\' is too small and too warm to retain an atniosphere, but the atmospheres of Venus, Earth, and Mars contain substantial, although differing, quantities of carbon dioxide. By contrast, the carbon which exists in the atmospheres of the large outer planets appears to be primarily in the form of methane, There is a similar difference betsveen the forms in which nitrogen is found in the two groups. The nitrogen in the earth's atmosphere is in the form of nitrogen gas, while the nitrogen in the atmosphere of Jupiter is primarily in the form of ammonia. In other words, the atmospheres of the inner planets are chemically oxidized; those of the outer planets are chemical!)- reduced.

Traveling aroimd the sun, then,

we

see different Icinds of bodies.

Why

some large and others small? \\'hy are some dense and others "fluffy"? Why are some chemically oxidized and others reduced? At present, we do not have definite answers to these questions, but we have been able to fit the obser\-ed facts into a broad picture which seems clear in are

outline,

ff

not in detail.

The elements which formed about

five

constitute our solar system appear to have been thousand million years ago as the result of a sequence

of nuclear reactions

which

as yet

About compounds planet formation were started.

are not clearly understood.

4,500 milhon years ago the newly formed elements and their

and the processes

began

to condense,

Many

chemical compounds were present in

of

this

primordial matter, but

those which predominated were h\-drogen and helium.

To

a lesser extent,

ammonia, and water were present. Considerably less abundant were the substances which make up the greater part of the earth— siHcates and metals. Condensation processes took place in a gaseous cloud surrounding the primitive sun. \\'ithin the asteroid belt, which lies bet\\-een Mars and quantities of methane,

Jupiter, the temperatures \\ere suflBciently high to permit the condensa-

tion only of the less volatile materials,

which

\\-ere

present in but small

more abimdant substances such as water, ammonia, and methane condensed. The condensed solids amalgamated by accretion processes and gave rise to planets which, inside the asteroid belt, were composed almost entirely of rocklike material and metals. Outside the asteroid belt, the accretion processes led to the formation of planets composed in large part of methane, ammonia, and water. In the special cases of Jupiter and Saturn, which were particularly favorably situated, large quantities of hydrogen and hehum were also retained as the result of gravitational puU. quantit)'.

Beyond the

asteroid belt, howe\'er, the

63

Symposium on Space

We know that

no substance which was present

inside the asteroid belt

retained by a as a gas at the time of planet formation could have been inner planets the of none words, other planet in appreciable quantity. In observe towhich we Those oceans. originally possessed atmospheres or

day must be almost entirely of secondary origin. Yet, on the earth we observe huge oceans. If water could not have been retained in free form originally, from where did it come? The answer appears to be that water was retained originally on the earth chemically bound within the rock-forming sihcates. As the earth heated, as the result of gravitational contraction coupled with the liberation of energy stored in radioactive substances, water was liberated from the depths, and oceans were formed. Other gaseous substances were also released by this heating process, in particular methane and other hydro-

carbons and ammonia.

on the earth for a sequence of chemical compounds of increasing complexity, and eventually to the evolution of molecules which could reproduce themselves. Life emerged, and the resultant living substances began to traverse the long and complicated path which we call evolution. In the meantime, the flux of radiant energy which fell continually upon the earth gave rise to other chemical processes. In particular, it decomposed atmospheric water vapor into hydrogen and oxygen gases. Because

The

stage

was thus

set

steps leading to the buildup of carbon

hydrogen escaped from the earth's left behind, combined with with nitrogen compounds dioxide and carbon form carbon compounds to greater part of the cartime, the period of nitrogen. Over a to form free dioxide, which cominto carbon these processes bon was converted by deposited as limeeventually and was bined with calcium in the ocean of

its

lightness, a great deal of the

gravitational pull.

A

The oxygen, which was

was established among the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, that in the ocean, and that tied up in sedimentary rocks. Eventually, the primitive Uving substances learned to "feed" upon the carbon dioxide of the oceans and the atmosphere, making use of the steady flow of radiation from the sun. Photosynthesis was "invented" and made possible the continuation of life processes for an indefinitely stone.

delicate balance

long period of time on a stable basis.

Within the thin less pulsation.

which covered the

film of life

New

was ceaseand old ones disap-

earth, there

species of living matter arose

peared. Organisms of increasing complexity emerged: single-celled animals, multi-celled animals, animals with supporting structures (bones), vertebrates, fish with lungs, amphibians, reptiles,

and

recently,

man emerged— a

tual thought, a creature which, for the

could wonder about

What about

its

past,

mammals. Eventually, power of concep-

creature possessing the

its

first

origins,

the other planets? Could

64

time in evolutionary history,

and life

its

place in the universe.

have emerged upon them

Harrison Brown as well?

The emergence

of life

would seem

to call for conditions of

"chemical flexibility"— conditions in which a multiplicity of chemical reactions can take place and in which very complicated compounds are is diflBcult to imagine life on Neptune, because the surface temperature is so low that rates of chemical reactions are extremely slow. It is equally diflBcult to imagine life on Mercury, where there is no atmosphere and where the temperature of the hot side is so high that complex organic substances would be

stable over long periods of time. It

for example,

Between these two extremes, howiever, there should be a broad spectrum of conditions in which life might have emerged and flourished. One might expect a priori that Venus, which is about the same size as the earth, would provide conditions suitable for the nourishment of life processes. Study of the planet indicates, however, that although carbon dioxide is extremely abundant in the atmosphere, little if any water is present. Further, the temperature of the planet appears to be so high that any oceans would be vaporized. Under the circumstances, it seems dubious that life exists there toda;,% although it might well have existed at some time in the distant past. Why should Venus have an oxidized atmosphere and at the same time possess little if any water? It is possible that, since Venus was formed closer to the sun than was the earth, its chemical combinations of water with silicates were less stable, with the result that Venus started its life with a paucity of water. Further, the radiation intensity in the neighborhood of Venus would decompose water at a greater rate than terrestrial water was decomposed, with the result that virtually all water on the unstable.

planet disappeared.

The

situation with respect to

Mars

is

quite different. Although the

planet possesses no oceans, water appears to be present.

show seasonal changes

The

polar caps

on occasion, deposits of hoarfrost can be seen during the Martian dawn. Also, there are color changes on the surface of the planet which appear to be seasonal and which might well be indicative of the presence of some form of plant life. If such life exists, however, it must be able to survive under extremely rugged circumstances. Winter and nighttime temperatures appear to fall far below those of our own Arctic regions, and Martian midday summer heat might be the equivalent of a cold fall day in New England. in size, and,

why Mars possesses so little water. was formed so far from the sun that hydrated rock substances should have been quite stable. It may be that, because of the smallness of the planet, the water was never liberated from the interior. It may also be that water was liberated, but because of the low gravitational pull of the planet, the water has escaped over the ages until it has by now virtually disappeared. If the latter is true, Mars at one time may have had much more water than we see today— It is interesting to

By

speculate as to

contrast with Venus, the planet

65

Symposium on Space even have had oceans. Under such circumstances, have been quite different (more moderate) would conditions

indeed the planet climatic

from those

may

we now

observe.

and speculation, we can state our universe as follows: concerning problems one of the great unsolved what is the probabilflexibility," "chemical possesses Given a planet that of a sequence of end product natural the emerge as ity that life will

With

background

this

of information

chemical events? Given a planet that is not too small (like the moon), not too hot (like Mercury), not too cold (like Neptune), not too large (like Jupiter), what is the likelihood that a sequence of chemical steps will result in the emergence, over a period of time, of living substance?

Looking at the earth alone, we cannot tell. For all we know, life might be a miracle, and indeed there are many who believe that it is. But if, through space exploration, we were to find life on Venus or Mars or both, it would then appear likely that the probability of life emerging naturally, given adequate conditions, would be as high. Such a discovery would have profound philosophical importance. We have good reason to believe that planetary systems are fairly abundant universe— indeed, perhaps as many as a billion billion stars which can be seen through our largest telescopes may have planets travin our visible

eling about

them

situated in such a

in orbit.

way

Even

that they

only a small fraction of these were

if

were not too

close to their stars, not

too far away, not too hot, not too cold, not too large, not too small,

life

be a very abundant commodity in our universe. Indeed, were some sort exists on Mars, the likelihood would be high that life also exists on perhaps as many as a thousand billion plancould

we

still

to find that life of

ets in

our visible universe.

This, then, of

it is

fact.

is

A

the broad picture as great deal

is

it

theory.

appears at the present time.

Much

is

speculation.

The

Much

picture

is

based upon facts gained through intensive study of the earth by men who have been confined to its surface, and by intensive study of the moon and planets from a great distance, using telescopes. Although there is a great deal which can yet be learned about the planets using terrestrially based equipment, we can see the beginning of the end. Telescopes have limited usefulness. There are certain kinds of important planetary measurements which simply cannot be made from the earth. Indeed, were it not possible to journey to the planets, there would be many questions which would remain unanswered for all time. And of these questions, perhaps the most important is that of extraterrestrial life. Is the earth unique? Or is life abundant elsewhere?

Our

newly developed

capabilities of sending spacecraft out of the

earth's gravitational field will

make

it

possible for us greatly to

increase our understanding of the solar system and

66

its

origins.

Already

Brown

Harrison

MARINER

II:

SPACE VEHICLE USED FOR OBSERVING VENUS moon and have come close to Venus and Mars

Already vehicles have struck the

vehicles have struck the

Given enough to bring

eflFort, it

them back

moon and have come

safely.

With

still

men to Mars and Venus and Much of what we wish to know

send

learned with instruments. or to

Mars

It is

in order to obtain

more

men on

effort, it

to bring

Venus and Mars. the moon and should be possible to

close to

should be possible to land

them back. moon and planets can be

about the

not necessary to send

most

men

to the

of the important information

moon

which we

need concerning these bodies. Indeed, for most purposes instruments are actually more effective than man, and coupled with this, they need not be returned to the earth. The information obtained by instruments can be telemetered back. Because the moon is so much closer to the earth than are the planets, it will, of course, be our first object of study. Using television cameras, we can obtain, even with a "crash landing," highly detailed pictures of the lunar surface. At present, our very best pictures of the moon have a resolution of about one-half mile. Using a television camera mounted on a lunar probe, a resolution of a few feet should be possible. By using television cameras placed in a spacecraft in orbit about the moon, it should be possible to obtain detailed maps of the entire lunar surface. 67

Symposium on Space Other exciting experiments could be undertaken from such a spacecraft. The temperatures of specific areas could be measured accurately. The radioactivity of the lunar surface could be determined, and this would and mass tell us a great deal about its chemical composition. The mass could be determined accurately. With improved techniques of rocketry, it should be possible to land a probe upon the moon "softly." This would make possible a variety of important measurements. Truly detailed pictures could be obtained of distribution within the

moon

The chemical composition of One could determine precisely. determined the lunar crust could be of other important variety A "moonquakes." whether or not there are which, taken tomeasured could be chemical and physical parameters concerning the know we now than gether, would tell us much more were made at measurements if particularly moon's origin and history— the region in the vicinity of the landing.

a

number

niques,

it

of lunar locations.

should be

With

further

improvement

in rocketry tech-

possible to obtain samples of the lunar surface

remote control and to return them

to the earth for

still

more

by

detailed

study.

Present techniques of rocketry permit us to launch spacecraft which

can come very close to our nearest planetary neighbors— Mars and Venus. The great distances involved restrict the kinds of measurements which can be made, in part because of the increased difficulty of communicaimportant measurements can be made, even at present. Television observations can be made, the chemical compositions of the atmospheres can be determined, and other important parameters

tion. Nevertheless,

fields and temperature can be measured. be able to land instrument packages "softly" on Mars and Venus long before we are able to send men there and bring them back.

such as magnetic

We

will

This will

mean

that prior to the

first

human

visits to

these planets

we

should have a fairly clear picture of the conditions the visitors will encounter. Detailed television pictures can be transmitted back to the

The compositions of the atmospheres can be determined in detail. General climatic conditions can be followed over long periods of time. The surfaces of the planets can be observed through both microscopes

earth.

and

telescopes.

Lower forms

of

life,

corresponding to terrestrial bacteria, can be

searched for on Mars and Venus by culturing the material on the surface and examining the cultures with microscopes which are remotely con-

Higher

trolled.

life

listening for sounds.

Venus,

form

we

exists

If so

then do

forms can be searched for by using television and Long before the first human visitors reach Mars and

should have a clear picture as to whether or not

life in

some

on these planets.

much can be

we

place so

learned about planets by using instruments,

much

effort

why

on the manned-space-flight program? 68

Brawn

Harrison

H.

M.

BEAGLE

S.

What would if

The U.

the scientific productivitij of the voyage of the "Beagle" have been a series of measurements had been substituted for Charles Darwin?

budget for fiscal year 1963 calls for Uvo-thirds of the total space effort to be placed on the manned-space-flight program while less than one-SLxth of the total budget is for scientific research in space. Is this a S.

reasonable distribution?

The ments

is that there are few situations involving scientific measurewhich machines are not more effective than men. What, for ex-

fact in

ample, in an orbiting earth satellite, could a man learn that could not be learned with proper instrumentation? The answer is: very httle. To this must be added the fact that when we place human beings in orbit, enormous and expensive safety precautions are necessary. We can take a

much greater risk with the The situation with respect

hfe of an instrument. to space

is

similar to that with respect to

the oceans. Most of our knowledge concerning the ocean depths has

been obtained using instruments and measuring and sampling devices of various sorts which have been lowered into the sea from surface ships. Recently, a lively debate took place within the go\'ernment concerning the

effort, if

any,

which should be taken

depths of the ocean— some 35,000 similar to those

program.

On

now

being used

feet.

in

to

send

men

to the greatest

The arguments pro and con were connection with the man-in-space

the one hand, devices which will permit

to great depths are very expensive. Perhaps the

men

to

same amount

descend

of

money

invested in surface ships and in high-quaHty instrumentation would, in

69

Symposium on Space the long run, yield more information about the ocean's depths than could possibly be obtained by sending men down in a thick steel sphere. On

man himself is an instrument far more complicated, and from certain points of view more effective, than those built in factories. No matter what parameter one might be interested in, it is vitally certain that an instrument can be made which is more accurate than a huthe other hand,

man

being.

A man can estimate temperature, but He can look at a rock and estimate

thermometer.

not as accurately as a its

chemical and min-

which will do the However, the human brain can integrate oba broad over-all pattern. A man-built machine well as a human being would be both unbeliev-

eralogical composition, but instruments are available

job

much more

accurately.

servations in terms of

which could do this as ably complex and expensive.

Let us imagine the geology of North America being determined enby remote control. It seems clear that we would know far less

tirely

than

we

actually

and particularly

now know

human participation, human competence with respect to the

as the result of detailed

as the result of

integration of observations. Or, to take another example,

what would

the scientific productivity of the voyage of the "Beagle" have been

if

a

measurements had been substituted for Charles Darwin? The importance of man as an integrator and sifter of information should not be underestimated. Yet, we should recognize that we are as yet far from the point where such capability can be utilized effectively in the space program. For each dollar of expenditure, far more useful information can be obtained at the present time from instruments than from men. But we would be cold, indeed, were we to take the point of view that our every action must be justified by practical results or by the series of

gleaning of specific scientific information. In particular, ignore the man-in-space program as a great

human

we

should not

adventure.

We

spend very large amounts of money on games and, closely related twenty million persons attended major league baseball games, and gross receipts at motion picture theaters exceeded one billion dollars. Is two or three billion dollars a year too much to pay for space adventure? One may argue about the magnitude of the space effort in the United States, and one may well argue about the proper distribution of that effort. But no matter how we look at the program, it seems clear that the adventure component must be recognized. The first non-stop flight over the Atlantic gleaned little information of scientific value. Yet, that first flight was important from several points of view, not the least of which was the adventure aspect.

to them, adventure. Last year about

budget for the American space The million dollars

effort has risen from about ninety 1958 to about 3.7 biUion dollars for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration alone in 1963. NASA projects that

in

70

Harrison Brown expenditure will take place at a rate of about thirteen billion dollars annually by 1970. Today the space program consumes over twenty per cent of the total governmental research and development effort. By 1970, it is estimated, space projects will take up nearly forty per cent of the

research and development budget. Considering the technical difficulties, even these large numbers may prove to be underestimates, particularly if past military experience can be taken as a guide.

The

greater part of the current space allocations

is

for the man-in-

a current budget of 2.2 billion dollars, this program

space program. With is already receiving about two-thirds of the total space agency allotment, and even now there are signs that the manned space program is running short of

money. According

to present estimates, the Apollo project (the

manned

lunar landing) will be at least 200 million dollars short of its needs with its current budget. Without a supplemental appropriation, the only way to make up the deficit will be to take money away from

first

other programs, such as the space sciences. Yet, there

is

already evidence

that the space sciences are not providing information suflBciently rapidly to

fill

the needs of the

Thus

far,

and

manned space program. sums of money

in spite of the large

involved, the pursuit

overwhelming support from American political leaders. The basis for this support is complex, but it is clear that it was triggered by the national humiliation received on October 4, 1957, when Sputnik I was launched successfully. Subsequent Soviet space successes, particularly in the manned-space-flight area, have served to of space technology has received

strengthen American resolve to achieve leadership in this field. In addition to the Cold War aspects of space, there is undoubtedly a feeling for the

drama and adventure

of

conquering the unknown, and a desire to War element suddenly

achieve practical applications. But were the Cold

removed,

it is

dubious that space projects would receive the enthusiastic

support which they enjoy today.

The general public does not appear as its leaders are. Indeed, a number

to

be

as enthusiastic

about space

of professional people, including

have expressed their doubts about the wisdom of pursuing such a program. There are numerous signs of a latent uneasiness. There are even some signs of direct hostility. A large part of the uneasiness concerning the space program probably stems from the fact that so much money is being spent on an effort which has little obvious bearing upon the major problems which confront our nation and the world today. People who are rightfully concerned about hunger in the world cannot help thinking of how much economic

some prominent

scientists,

development could be stimulated with 3.7 billion dollars this year, growing rapidly to thirteen billion dollars by 1970. People who are rightfully worried about the alarming rate of population growth in the world cannot help thinking of what 3.7 billion dollars might do if directed 71

Symposium on Space toward the solution of that problem. Educators think of how much education could be purchased, and worry about the effect of the influx of space-designated funds upon the intellectual values of their staflFs and students. Others argue that large expenditures on space hinder the allocation of funds to other branches of science, to social science, and to the humanities. It seems possible that this uneasiness, which has been expressed in many different ways, will permeate American political leadership in the not-far-distant future.

The political fact of the matter, however, is that if space programs were completely eliminated, allocation of the funds for other worthy public purposes would not by any means be certain. In other words, the question of the emphasis we place on space projects should be decided on the intrinsic merits of the projects and not by comparison with other projects which might, in actual fact, be more useful. The first question which we must answer is from many points of view the most difficult. Do we really want to venture into space? My own answer is an enthusiastic "Yes," but I would like us to go into space for the right reasons and not for the wrong ones. We should venture into space simply because it is an enormously exciting thing to do. What is human destiny if it is not to learn about the universe in which we live? Americans should not engage in space projects simply because the Russians are

engaging in them.

tion to "national prestige"

Can we

I

believe that the question of space in relagreatly overemphasized.

is

At present, space expenditures be alarmingly high. Even at the rate of expenditure projected for 1970, the cost would come to less than t\vo per cent of the American gross national product. This represents something like three to five per cent of the activity of the industrial sector of the economy. Indeed, it may well be that the funding of space activities represents an appreciable contribution to economic growth. Given the desirability of venturing into space and given further the afford to venture into space?

do not appear

to

estimate that

we

My

can afford

it,

we

are

going about

it

in the right

way?

and Russians have been looking at space exploration primarily as a race, and in doing so have permitted themselves to become stampeded. In their push to place men on the moon as quickly as possible, they have inflated the man-in-space project to the point where it already dominates the space effort and personal feeling

is

threatens to envelop

Before

them

we

that the Americans

it.

men on the moon and planets and return should study the objects as carefully as we can

attempt to place

to the earth,

we

with instruments. By

we should aim at eventually sending we should take care of first things first. Should a Russian land on the moon first, it would not be a catastrophe for America. Indeed, we should recognize that no matter how men

to the

moon and

all

means,

planets, but

72

Harrison

much

effort is

Brown

placed on the manned-space-flight program, the probabilhappen anyway. Also, the first man will

ity is substantial that this will

probably not learn a great deal. The moon and the planets are large, and adequate exploration will require many lengthy visits. The establishment of the goal to place a man on the moon by the end of this decade makes a certain amount of sense, for it gives a definite time for a

But

definite limited objective.

out of balance, nor should

we

we

should not permit our program to get

permit

it

become a

to

circus just because

such a goal exists. Space experiments are, by their very nature, terribly expensive, with the result that they should be selected with the greatest possible care. It is often pointed out that the cost of a unit of information obtained in the space program

is

unreasonably high compared with costs of other

areas of scientific inquiry.

Here we must recognize

information are by their very nature

entific

that

some

bits of sci-

difficult to obtain.

Nuclear

physics has always been expensive relative, let us say, to the study of butterfly ecology, largely because of the high cost of the

equipment

in-

we are willing to spend money on accelerators because we that we cannot obtain the desired information unless we do so.

volved. Yet,

recognize

jump from butterfly ecology to nuclear physics was expensive, jump into space. We are confronted by the fact that we can

Just as the so

is

the

obtain valuable information only

Unless

we

are willing to

make

if

we

are willing to spend the money.

a substantial (and expensive)

effort,

the

information simply will not be forthcoming.

What past?

are the conditions on other plants?

Does

it

exist there

today?

permeate the universe? Can is

our past?

Where

we

To what contact

Has

life

existed there in the

extent does living intelligence

it?

Can we understand

it?

What

Hes our future? These are some of the questions which

can be answered over the next decades and centuries through man's exploration of space. We are indeed on the threshold of the greatest of mankind's intellectual experiences.

73

A

COMMENTARY

BY THE EDITORS I

is understood as something that began on October 4, 1957 (with the launching of Sputnik I), then the Great Books would have nothing to say on this

"space exploration" or "the conquest of space"

If

But there

subject.

row

fashion.

is

no reason

Long before

to conceive space exploration in that nar-

were sent up, man explored

artificial satellites

space and, to a certain extent, conquered Indeed, the very idea of

it.

earth satellites precedes their actual

artificial

existence

by more than 250

years. Since all descriptions of launchings of

satellites

make much

need

lite is

Newton, the

of the

considered successful only to

whom we owe

successful

A

overcome

gravity,

"in orbit,"

and since a

satel-

appropriate that

it is

the theory of universal gravitation as well as

explanation

anticipated the existence of

to

if it is

of

planetary

artificial

was not

orbits,

should himself have

earth satellites:

would not deviate and that with air was taken away. It is by its gravity that it is drawn aside continually from its rectilinear course, and made to deviate towards the earth, more or less, according to the force of its gravity, and the velocity of its motion. The less its gravity is, or the quantity of its matter, or the greater the velocity with which it is projected, the less will it deviate from a rectilinear course, and the farther it will go. If a leaden ball, projected from the top of a mountain by the force of gunpowder, with a given velocity, and in a direction projectile,

if it

for the force of gravity,

towards the earth, but would go off from it an uniform motion, if the resistance of the

parallel to the horizon,

is

in a right line,

carried in a curved line to the distance of

two miles before it falls to the ground; the same, if the resistance of the air were taken away, with a double or decuple velocity, would fly twice or ten times as far. And by increasing the velocity, we may at pleasure increase the distance to which it might be projected, and diminish the curvature of the line which it might describe, till at last it should fall at the distance of 10, 30, or 90 degrees, or even might go quite round the whole earth before it falls; or lastly, so that it might never fall to the earth, but go forwards into the celestial spaces, and proceed in its motion in infinitum. And after the same manner that a projectile, by the force of gravity, may be made to revolve in an orbit, and go round the whole earth, the moon also, either by the force of gravity, if it is endued with gravity, or by any other force, that impels it towards the earth, may be continually drawn aside towards the earth, out of the rectilinear way which by its innate force it would pursue; and would be made to revolve in the orbit which it now describes; nor could the moon without some such force be retained in its orbit (Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy, Vol. 34, pp. 6b-7a).

74

Commentary by the

Editors

Notice the comparison between the moon, a natural earth satelHte, and that

projectiles

thrown up rapidly enough to become

are

artificial

satellites!

Undoubtedly,

mention of actual penetration into space There were, of course, earlier mythological accounts, such as that of Icarus' ill-fated attempt to fly with wings made by his marvelously skillful father, Daedalus. Icarus did not heed the warnings of his father and flew too close to the sun; the wax which held together his wings melted, and Icarus this is the first

by man or man-made objects

in a serious scientific book.

crashed to his death.

But serious concern with space far antedates even Newton. Space, as which surrounds the earth and that in which the heavenly bodies contained, has been a subject of interest ever since men began to are think scientifically about themselves and the world in which they live. Plato, in the Timaeus, gives us his view of how the heavenly bodies are

that

arranged:

The sun and moon and five other stars, which are called the planets [God] in order to distinguish and preserve the numwere created by bers of time; and when he had made their several bodies, he placed them in the orbits in which the circle of the other was revolving— in seven orbits seven stars. First, there was the moon in the orbit nearest the earth, and next the sun, in the second orbit above the earth; then came the morning star and the star sacred to Hermes, moving in orbits which have an equal swiftness with the sun, but in an opposite direction; and this is the reason why the sun and Hermes and Lucifer overtake and are overtaken by each other. To enumerate the places which he assigned to the other stars, and to give all the reasons why he assigned them, although a secondary matter, would give more trouble than the primary (Vol. 7, .

p.

.

.

45la-b).

This

is

a fairly accurate account of the

way

arranged; except that, of course, Plato's system

in is

which the planets are geocentric. Interesting,

the purpose for which, according to Plato, the planets were made: "to distinguish and preserve the numbers of time." A similar notion is expressed by Aristotle, who calls time "the number of movement." In too,

is

heavenly bodies each have their own sphere, with the earth at the center of all these spheres. Thus, there is first the sphere of the moon, then that of Mercury, then that of Venus, and so on for each of the planets. Beyond the last planetary sphere there is a sphere of the fixed stars, and finally there is a last sphere beyond this one. "The heaven" includes everything within this last sphere and the sphere itself. Beyond this, there is nothing. Aristotle says: Aristotle's view, the various

It is therefore evident that there is also no place or void or time outside the heaven. For in every place body can be present; and void is said to be that in which the presence of body, though not actual, is

possible;

and time

is

the

number

of

75

movement. But

in the absence of

Symposium on Space natural

body there

is

no movement, and outside the heaven,

as

we have

nor can come to exist. It is clear then that there is neither place, nor void, nor time, outside the heaven {On the Heavens, Vol. 8, p. 370b-c).

shown, body neither

Both

and

Plato's

Aristotle's theory,

exists

Aristotle's it

is

Outside the heavens there is

worlds seem quite small and

clear that there is

is

finite.

And

in

nothing outside the heavens.

not even any "empty space" or "void." This

quite different from the theory put forth by Lucretius. There are just

two kinds

of things in the world, according to this

Roman

poet

who was

a follower of Epicurus and Democritus, namely, atoms and void

(or

vacuum). These two things are mutually exclusive: where there are atoms, there is no void; and where there is void, there are no atoms. Void is what makes motion possible; unless it existed, the whole universe would be filled with bodies (made up of atoms), and none of them would have any place to move. Lucretius' void is, therefore, a sort of "pure" space— pure because it is space without anything in it. His universe, consisting of bodies and pure space or void, is quite naturally conceived to be infinite. There can be nothing outside it. Lucretius proves this by reduction to the absurd:

Again if for the moment all existing space be held to be bounded, supposing a man runs forward to its outside borders, and stands on the utmost verge and then throws a winged javelin, do you choose that when hurled with vigorous force it shall advance to the point to which it has been sent and fly to a distance, or do you decide that something can get in its way and stop it? for you must admit and adopt one of the two suppositions; either of which shuts you out from all escape and compels you to grant that the universe stretches without end. For whether there is something to get in its way and prevent its coming whither it was sent and placing itself in the point intended, or whether it is carried forward, in either case it has not started from the end. In this way I will go on and, wherever you have placed the outside borders, I will ask what then becomes of the javelin. The result will be that an end can nowhere be fixed, and that the room given for flight will still prolong the power of flight (On the Nature of Things, Vol. 12, pp. 12d-13a). Interestingly enough, the idea of a "pure" space,

body

in

it,

was

criticized 1,800 years later

i.e.,

space without

by the philosopher George

Berkeley. Berkeley's arguments were, of course, mainly directed against

Newton's views, but they apply

"We

just as well to Lucretius:

we cannot even frame When I speak of pure

an idea of pure Space exclusive or empty space, it is not to be supposed that the word "space" stands for an idea distinct from or conceivable without body and motion. When, therefore, supposing all the world to be annihilated besides my own body, I say there still remains pure Space, thereby nothing else is meant but only that I conceive it possible for the limbs of my body to be moved on all sides without the of

all

shall find

body

.

.

.

.

76

.

.

Commentary by

the Editors

least resistance, but if that too, were annihilated then there could be no motion, and consequently no Space" {The Principles of Human Knowl-

edge, Vol. 35, pp. 435d-436a).

Although Lucretius, in the first centurv' B.C.. had already conceived of an infinitely extended uni\'erse, there is no intimation of it in the astronomical theoty of Ptolemy, in the second centur\- a.d. In the Almagest. Ptolemy gives a picture of a universe which, though large, need not be infinite. Xor, for that matter, need it be very large, at least compared to the distances which are commonplace in modem astronomy. It merely is required that the distance from the earth to the fixed stars is large enough so that the diameter of the earth is, relative to this distance, as small as a point. Xo matter where we are on the earth, the universe above us always seems to be exactly a hemisphere. Thus the sphere of the fixed stars and the earth are in the same relation to one another as the surface of a sphere and its center. Copernicus' o\-erthrow of the Ptolemaic system was a lectual conquest of space.

One

h}-pothesis— the heliocentric

strictly intel-

one— replaced

an earlier hypothesis— the geocentric one. In the course of thirteen centhe Ptolemaic system had grown cumbersome with additions, details, and ad hoc solutions to problems that arose from additional

turies,

obser\'ations.

system was

What had once been a beautiful and beautifully simple now a complex and \eritably incomprehensible s)'stem of

circles, circles

upon

circles,

and imaginar\'

points. Copernicus' revolution

One price to be paid for world was that the universe had vastly larger than it had been in the Ptolemaic view.

restored simplicit)^ to the astronomical picture. this

to

renewed simple pictm^e

be conceived

Whereas

as

of the

the Ptolemaic uni\-erse, the size of the earth was un-

in

appreciable in relation to the sphere of the fixed

stars, in

universe the size of the earth's orbit around the sun relation to the sphere of the fixed stars. For, is

in

its

circuit

around the sun, the

uni\'erse

is

the

Copemican

unappreciable in

no matter where the earth seems to be exactly hemi-

entire orbit never appears to move out "Although [the earth] is not at the centre of the world, nevertheless the distance [between the earth and the center of the universe] is as nothing, particularly in comparison with the sphere of the fixed stars" {On the Revolutiatis of the Heavenly

spherical. Thus, the earth in

its

of the center of the universe:

Spheres, Vol. 16, p. 517b). that the

magnitude

of the

And world

again, Copernicus writes: "I also say is

such

that,

.

.

.

although the distance from

the sun to the Earth in relation to whatsoe\'er planetar\- sphere you

please possesses magnitude which

sufficiently manifest in proportion

is

compared with the sphere of the pp. 525a-526a). Thus the Copemi-

to these dimensions, this distance, as fixed stars,

is

imperceptible" {Ibid.,

can intellectual revolution took man, as the inhabitant of the earth, out 77

Symposium on Space and the universe in which he now has a tremendously larger than Ptolemy or any of the ancients

of the center of the universe; side seat

is

ever imagined

it

to be.

II

Does

change

this

Does

it

aflFect

in the physical location of

the

way

in

man

which man looks

stature?

aflFect his

at himself? In the

Copemican revolution deeply affected Finding himself no longer at the center and apex of creation, man felt deeply wounded and has felt so ever since. And this damage to his pride has been magnified by two subsequent scientific revolutions which were even more devastating than Copernicus': opinion of Sigmund Freud, the

man's

self-love.

had to endure from the hands of upon its naive self-love. The first was when it our earth was not the centre of the universe, but only a

Humanity has

in the course of time

science two great outrages realized that

tiny speck in a world-system of a

associated in our minds with the

magnitude hardly conceivable;

name

this is

although Alexandrian doctrines taught something very similar. The second was when biological research robbed man of his peculiar privilege of having been specially created, and relegated him to a descent from the animal world, implying an ineradicable animal nature in him: this transvaluation has been accomplished in our own time upon the instigation of Charles Darwin, Wallace, and their predecessors, and not without the most violent opposition from their contemporaries. But man's craving for grandiosity is now suffering the third and most bitter blow from present-day psychological research which is endeavouring to prove to the ego of each one of us that he is not even master in his own house, but that he must remain content with the veriest scraps of information about what is going on unconsciously in his own mind (A General Introduction to PsychoAnalysis, Vol. 54, p. 562c-d). It is

probably

fair to

of Copernicus,

extend Freud's statement and to say that

all

great scientific discoveries of the twentieth century have tended to

man more and more

insignificant in his

own

eyes.

Compared

the

make

to the

which matter is composed, man and his sensory apparatus seem gross and inadequate; compared to the energy released by nuclear ex'plosions, man's physical power seems insignificant and ludicrous; compared to the size of the universe as revealed by modem optical and radio telescopes, the world that is visible to man seems to be a mere speck. At the very beginning of the modem scientific era, Pascal spoke of the "frightful spaces of the universe which surround me" and added that "the eternal silence of these infinite spaces frightens

infinitesimal particles of

me"

{Pensees, Vol. 33, pp. 207b, 211a). In this view, therefore, man looks down upon himself as the result

own

and inventions; for example, automation— the combined with basic knowledgehas degraded man more than any tyrant or dictator could, in making him of his

discoveries

result of superb technological skills

78

.

Commentary by

the Editors

own creation. Similarly, in this view, the of manned and unmanned vehicles, the prospective conquest of the moon and the planets by men and their instruments, will not only be a triumph of human daring and skill, it will also be another step in a series in which each human success lowers less useful

and

skillful

exploration of space

than his

by means

the stature of man. Quite obviously, the "conquest of space" not only

emphasizes the great achievements of which humans are it

to

also calls attention to the frailty of

be protected from a

human

capable,

hostile environment), to the vastness of the uni-

verse (through the realization that an entire

be

now

beings (through their need

human

more than a minute layer

suflBcient to explore

earth), to the possible non-uniqueness of

man

lifetime

would not

of space next to the

(through the anticipation

and rational beings may be found on other celestial bodies ) Yet this result seems almost too paradoxical; for, in this view of things, we infer that man is small and despicable on the basis of discoveries made by man himself. Why should not these discoveries— and their consequent technological applications— be considered a sign of man's greatness and grandeur? Is it not a sign of man's impressive stature that he is able to find out the constitution of matter down to its most minute and evanescent particles, that he is able to explore the celestial universe with telescopes for distances of millions of light-years, that he has discovered the secrets of heredity, that he is in the process of almost eliminating disease from the surface of the earth? In fact, the more complex the world is discovered to be, the more admirable is man, who is able to understand all these things. If, in Bacon's words, "Knowledge and human power are synonymous" {Novum Organum, Vol. 30, p. 107b), then as man acquires more and more knowledge, practical as well as theoretical, he necessarily becomes more and more powerful. And this would seem to imply an increase in stature. that Hving

The word

"stature" has physical connotations. In

man's stature

man

is

his height

its

literal

sense, a

and other dimensions. As a physical

entity,

has shrunk, relative to the universe, as a result of scientific dis-

coveries.

worth

But "stature"

also refers, metaphorically, to

in other respects. In these

the years. For increase his

man

man's dignity and

ways, man's "stature" has increased over

has used his powers of thought and reasoning to

knowledge and

to apply this

knowledge

in order to

conquer

nature. Indeed, man's stature considered simply as physical being

never very great. Even

how

was

vast the

and strength they were the many brute animals. But men have always felt that their

universe might be, inferiors of

men

before there was any inkling of realized that in size

worth was higher than that of other beings, because of their intellectual and spiritual powers. And from this point of view, man's stature is unaffected by technological progress or any discoveries about nature and the universe, either in the past or in the future.

79

Symposium on Space Thus Sophocles

in the fifth century b.c.

wrote of

man and

his greatness:

Speech, Wonders are many, and none is more wonderful than man. and wind-swift thought, and all the moods that mould a state, hath he taught himself; and how to flee the arrows of the frost, when 'tis hard lodging under the clear sky, and the arrows of the rushing rain; yea, he hath resource for all; without resource he meets nothing that must come: only against Death shall he call for aid in vain; but from baffling maladies he hath devised escapes. Cunning beyond fancy's dream is the fertile skill which brings him, now to evil, now to good (Antigone, Vol. 5, p. .

.

.

134a-b).

And also

similarly the psalmist, while praising the

Lord and

all his

works,

remarks on the privileged position of man:

[man] little less than God, and dost crown Thou hast made him with glory and honor. Thou hast given him dominion over the works of thy hands; thou hast put all things under his feet (Ps. 8:5-6). .

And

.

.

.

finally

we may

.

.

recall the

passage in which Hamlet expresses his

admiration of man:

work is a man! how noble in reason! how infinite in form and moving how express and admirable! in action how like an angel! in apprehension how like a god! the beauty of the world! the paragon of animals! (Hamlet, Vol. 27, p. 43d).

What

a piece of

faculty! in

But none of these expressions of the grandeur of man is made by a they are all made by poets. We may well wonder, then, whether perhaps scientific and technological progress has lowered man, so that scientists can no longer agree— if ever they did— with this high evaluation of him. The long passage from Freud which we quoted earlier might scientist;

lead us to think It

so.

interesting to

is

thinkers

who

note,

initiated the

therefore,

new view

that

some

of the

Renaissance

of the universe did not feel that

they were lowering the stature of man. Giordano Bruno (1548-1600)

and time. and contains an infinity of worlds like our own. But this does not reduce man to an unimportant speck of dust. On the contrary, man can only reach perfection in an infinite universe. Because man's will and desire for knowledge are infinite, man can achieve his end and goal only in an infinite universe. Similarly, Kepler (1571-1630) did not have a low opinion of man.

rejected the Aristotelian view of a universe finite in space

The universe

Kepler

is

for

Bruno

the father of

is

infinite

modem

nicus. In Kepler's work, for the

astronomy, perhaps more so than Coperfirst time, the ancient notions concerning

the earth, the heavens, and the sun are given up. Instead of heavenly

80

Commentary by bodies being constituted of a

the Editors

diflFerent

matter from terrestrial ones (as

they are in the astronomy of Aristotle, of Ptolemy, and nicus),

all

still

Coper-

of

bodies, heavenly or terrestrial, are recognized as being of

the same kind. Instead of perfect circular motion of the stars— as something that

is

due

to the stars

because of their very perfection— we have

irregular motions such as the elliptical orbits of the planets. Kepler

was one of the first astronomers to whom the telescope was available, and he could observe such phenomena as the moons of Jupiter and the phases of Venus. The complexity and apparent confusion which had entered the astronomical picture were cleared up by the work of men like Kepler, Galileo, Newton, and their successors, and led to the recognition of the scientific laws on which modern technology, including space travel, is

based.

Though well aware

of what he was doing, Kepler was not worried he was lessening the stature of man. On the contrary, throughout his works there is much praise and jubilation over the intellectual powers of man ( including those of Kepler himself! ) and a definite feeling that these discoveries exalt rather than degrade man. The center of the universe is the most important and dignified place in it, says Kepler, and so it belongs to the sun which is a more important and primary body than the earth. Yet this does not diminish the stature of man; for in placing the sun in the center and the earth at a distance from the center, he made it clear that he was speaking of the earth "in so far as it is a part of the edifice of the world, and not of the dignity of the governing creatures which inhabit it" (Epitome of Copernican Astronomy,

that

,

Vol. 16, p. 854b).

In Newton's view, space

is

absolute and "in

its

own

nature, without

relation to anything external, remains always similar and immovable" (Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy, Vol. 34, p. 8b). It is

extended

infinitely in all directions;

and Newton and

finds that

"God

is

able

proportions to space, and perhaps of different densities

and in several and forces, and

make worlds

of several sorts

to create particles of matter of several sizes

thereby to vary the laws of Nature, and

figures,

in several parts of the Universe" (Optics, Vol. 34, p. 543a).

The contemplation Newton.

On

of infinite spaces or other worlds does not distress

the contrary, anything which increases knowledge

encouraged. For, he shall at length

tells

us, "if natural

philosophy in

all

be perfected, the bounds of moral philosophy

its

is

will

be

to

parts

.

.

.

be also

enlarged" (Ibid., Vol. 34, p. 543b).

The scientist who has perhaps changed modern man's ideas of space more than anyone else is Albert Einstein. In Relativity: The Special and General Theory (see The Great Ideas Today 1961, pp. 427-475), he develops the theory that there

continuum. In

is

just

this view, the universe

81

is

one four-dimensional space-time non-Euclidean (i.e., the laws of

Symposium on Space Euclidean geometry do not hold true), and Einstein envisages the possibility of a universe that is finite. Is such a radical overthrow of traditional ideas derogatory to man or to man's nature? At least one

commentator on Einstein

made us merely by way

\vrites that "the

theory of relativity has simul-

and richer by showing

in the

realm of physics,

taneously

freer

not

of abstract advice but in concrete performance, that

our intellectual capacity of knowledge reaches farther than our sensory capacity of perception."^

For the boldest statement of how modern scientific knowledge has benefited man, we must return to Kepler. He finds that in his view of the universe, the dignity of the earth may have been lowered, but not the dignity of man. Indeed, he goes on to say that it is entirely appropriate to put the sun in the center of the world and make the earth travel around it, because the earth has a special station as the home of

man: From

movement home of the

the end of

the Earth as the

...

it is

proved that movement belongs

speculative creature. For

it

to

was not fitting and its contem-

man, who was going to be the dweller in this w^orld one place of it as in a closed cubicle: in that way he would never have arrived at the measurement and contemplation of the so distant stars, unless he had been furnished with more than human gifts; or rather since he was furnished with the eyes which he now has and with the faculties of his mind, it was his office to move around in this verv spacious edifice by means of the transportation of the Earth his home and to get to know the difi'erent stations, according as they are measurers— i.e., to take a promenade— so that he could all the more correctly view and measure the single parts of his house (Op. cit., \'oI. 16, pp. 915b-916a). that

plator, should reside in

This point of view

movement

of

man

if the is immediately transferable to space travel: with the earth contributes to his dignity and station

because of the added things he can contemplate, then so does travel through space in artificial heavenly bodies— and it does so to an increased degree, because man's travel with the earth is involuntary, but travel through space is voluntary and a conscious commitment of man to the enterprise of knowledge.

1

Aloy.s

Wenzl

Evanston,

111.:

in

Albert Einstein: Philosopher-Scientist, ed. by Paul A. of Living Philosophers, Inc., 1949, p. 605.

The Library

82

Schilpp,

PART TWO

An Essay on Time: The Tempo of History AN ANALYSIS BY THE EDITORS

THE TEMPO OF HISTORY "Consider the past

"...

.... Thou

Condense, if you will, the thousand years of man's rehalf a corded history [into] century. About ten years ago man emerged from his cave five years ago man learned Last month, electric to write. lights and telephones and automoOnly last biles and airplanes. nuclear power. And week

mayest foresee also the things which will be. For they will certainly be of like form, and it is

fifty

.

.

not possible that they should deviate from the order of the things

which take place now: accordingly to have contemplated

human same

life for

forty years

is

.

.

.

the

.

.

.

.

.

have contemplated it for ten thousand years. For what more wilt thou see?" Emperor Marcus Aurehus

.

.

.

.

as to

.

.

.

.

.

if America's new spacecraft succeeds in reaching Venus, we will have literally reached the stars before midnight tonight." President John F. Kennedy

now

(a.d. 121-180), Meditations,

Vol. 12, p.

.

.

282d

INTRODUCTION

When

a man lives to be a hundred, he has lived a long time. If his hundredth birthday occurs in 1963, he has lived a thousand years, in some respects ten thousand, and in some a million. He has seen the world change as no man before him. Within his lifetime, the world has advanced from the four-wheeled wagon of his birth ( and of Mesopotamia fifty

centuries ago) to the space capsule.

This centenarian of 1963 was born in the world's most advanced cul-

was a culture in which men lived lives much like those of many commonplace ways it was a culture like that of biblical times, in which water was drawn from wells, clothing was homespun (and candles and soap homemade), oil lit the lamps, man's muscle moved most of his tools, and most men traveled either by horse ( as they had in ancient Egypt) or on foot (as they had about a million years before). The men then alive (and in all ages previously) had not expected to be astounded in their lifetimes, and they hadn't been. Marvelous new things had come— the printing press, the telescope, the cotton gin, the steam engine— and people spoke of "modern times." But those innovations had proceeded at a pedestrian pace from the Renaissance on. Their advent was manageable; the world could cope with them. No great engineer ever had to confess, as Herbert Hoover did of Telstar: "The electronics men have just gone beyond my comprehension. I belong to a generation that just doesn't grasp all that." There was always, in all ture,

but

it

their ancestors. In

84

The Tempo

of History

past eras, more of the old remaining than there was of the new; more of the famihar, the homely, and the miderstood.

Not that the world had stood cause

man

is

a restless creature.

rigid the slave,

changes,

if

The

still. The world is a However remote the

however repressive the

t}Tant, there

restless place, be-

goatherd, however

had always been

not from generation to generation, then from century to cen-

making took four hundred years to travel a hiuidred miles in neolithic Europe— but it traveled. Wandering and war cross-fertilized ci\-ilizations. There were sudden slave revolutions, sudden continents found, sudden "breakthroughs" like the clock or the compass. From the standpoint of the whole of human society, there had never been a stable world, ^^^hat there had been was a sfabhj changing world ^^'hich was recognizable from historical epoch to historical epoch. With a modicum of orientation, it is not impossible that a Marcus Aurelius could have stepped from the second century into the nineteenth; more comfortably, in any case, than a nineteenth-century man could step into the middle of the twentieth. Or, indeed, more comfortably than an early-twentieth-centur\' man could step into the 1960's. Ours is the first time in human histor)- in which no man dies in the era in which he was bom. The child of e\'en fifty years ago could have awakened in ancient Assyria or Babylon and recognized the essential conditions of human life: the times and modes of planting and harvest and, in the cities, of the season's first w^onderful fresh fruits and vegetables in the stalls and the stores; the work done by hand— grinding, corn shelling, churning— with the help of domestic animals in the fields; the heat and the cold of unconditioned air. Oh, there were wonders fifty years ago, too, but the difference betsveen lighting a candle and turning up the gas was sometuT}'.

thing a

art of potter}-

man

(or a child) could assimilate.

Fifty years later— the time of a single generation— and for the in history all historv'

is

ancient. Richthofen

first

time

and Verdun, the Gay Twenties

and Jimmy Walker, the Great Depression, WPA— all belong to ages remote now, all misty in the minds of young men and women. The Lusitania and \^^ilson and Trotsky have receded with Munich, Bataan, and

Warm

Springs. It

all

happened when people

built houses with

one bath-

room.

Twenty years have re\'olutionized life, not only in baclavard but in advanced societies. Young Germans, bom in a world of half-timbered houses and hewn stone, now live in a world of aluminum, plastic, and glass. In t\vo decades a basic new idea of life and of human relations has arisen from the smoking ruins of timeless tradition. Wherever he is— Europe, Asia, America— the child of t^venty years ago hves in a phenomenally new world. He has gone from radio to tele\'ision, from propeller to jet, from block buster to world buster. The fen-year-old, born in the pre85

An

Essay on Time

computer age, has seen the birth of the workerless factory. And the fivewho entered Hfe as a member of an earthbound race, Hves in a world in which men circle the skies and rockets streak toward Venus. In 1776 it took more than three days to go from Boston to New York year old,

means

man

What

important about this

by the

fastest

fact

not that the trip took three days, but that the time of the journey

is

was the same before.

What

was no

faster

fire

signals as

as

it

that

could travel.

would have been a thousand

is

or

two thousand years

more— since transportation meant communication— there way known for men to exchange information, except by old as fire itself. (When the inventor of the telegraph,

is

he was able from Washington, D. C, to New Haven, Connecticut, in seven days— no faster than Nebuchadnezzar, Caesar, Charlemagne, or Na-

Samuel

F. B. Morse, tried to get to his wife's funeral in 1825,

to journey

poleon.

)

The world we now

live in

is

the product of near-instantaneous com-

munication and of transportation approaching instantaneity.

It is

a world

which there are two weeks by mule or as many minutes by jet. In terms of the world of technology, the year 1769, when James Watt got his first patent for a steam engine, is more important than 1776. But 1776 was important, too: it was a year of historic action that established a new kind of nation. It was also —though few men noted the fact— the year in which a new insight into in

The pace

1000

alternative routes across the Andes: four to six

of technological inventions from a.d.

1200

1000

to the present

1300 86

1400

1500

human

histor}-

made

its

The Tempo

of History

appearance,

when two

great thinkers concluded

independently of one another that the rate of social change was increasing. Their observations were not precise. Gibbon noted in his "general

human

history that man's "progress in the improvement mental and corporeal faculties has been irregular and N^arious; infinitely slow in the beginning, and increasing by degrees with ." (Decline and Fall redoubled velocit\' of the Roman Empire, Vol. 40,

observations" on

and exercise of

his

.

p.

633d

)

.

.

And Adam

Smith, commenting on national wealth and revenue,

said that "their pace seems ... to have

been gradually accelerated have been going on, but to ha\-e been going on faster and faster" (The Wealth of Nations, Vol. 39, p. 38a). Within a century the insight of Gibbon and Smith was solid doctrine. Professor Lewis H. Morgan wrote in 1877 that "human progress, from

They seem not only

first

to last, has

.

.

.

to

been

in a ratio not rigorously

but essentially geometrical

and most rapid in the last)." And fiftv' years Harvey Robinson said: "Man's progress was wellhistorian ago, James (slowest in the

first

period,

.

nigh imperceptible for tens of thousands of years

.

.

.

but

it

.

.

tends to in-

By 1917 anthropolophenomenon in vivid fash-

crease in rapidit\' with an ever-accelerating tempo." gist

Robert H. Lowie was able

ion:

"We may liken the progress of mankind to who dawdles through kindergarten for 85

old,

to express the

that of a

man

100 years

years, takes 10 years to

go through the primar}' grades, then rushes ^^dth lightning rapidity through grammar school, high school, and college." Considering the na-

MICROSCOPE TELEVISION

1900 87

2000

Essay on Time

An

few

ture of the developments of the past

one might add, "and

years,

graduate research."

The term

may be moot; what

"progress"

social change.

is

not moot

staggers the imagination

And what

the fact of

is

not change

is

or

itself,

the spectacular character of individual changes, but the "ever-accelerating tempo." It is as if human history were a machine moving along in

low gear—with occasional bumps, blowouts, and breakdowns— and then, having always before resumed its journey in the same gear, suddenly shifting into a higher gear; then, after a short interval, into a

higher,

still

and then, after a still shorter interval, into a still higher. To the spectator (more awesomely, to the passenger), the sight is marvelous and also terrifying: Will it go on accelerating? Is it out of control, roaring forward faster and faster toward some sort of grand smashup? Will it burn itself out like a rocket? Will

ever again slow

it

HUMAN NATURE AND THE

Whatever

view

—"God

down?

IDEA OF PROGRESS

we take of the bibUcal doctrine of special creation man in his own image" (Gen. 1:27)—his distinc-

created

tiveness in kind

from the

rest of creation is generally

and the like us from the

.

just .

.

and

.

.

.

unjust,

distinguishes

Hegel (Philosophy of History, Vol. 46, Pascal's view of man as "a thinking reed" {Pensees,

brutes,"

p. 156c), reflecting

"Man

assumed.

any sense of good and evil, of ..." (Politics, Vol. 9, p. 446c). "Thought

alone," said Aristotle, "has

says

Vol. 33, p. 233b).

The

Man

decisive evidence for man's distinctiveness

in the

is

realm of action.

and to act, with some measure of freedom, upon his choice. This freedom (however limited or conditioned) is the freedom not merely to change or be changed, but to will change. "The changes that take place in nature," says Hegel, "how inalone has the

finitely

power

to choose

may be— exhibit

manifold soever they

only a perpetually

repeating cycle; in nature there happens 'nothing

and the multiform play

of

its

phenomena

new under

self-

the sun,'

so far induces a feeling of

ennui; only in those changes which take place in the region of spirit does

new arise. This peculiarity in the world of mind has indicated in man an altogether different destiny from that of merely naobjects— in which we find always one and the same stable character,

anything

the case of tural

to

which

all

change reverts— namely, a

real capacity for change,

for the better, an impulse of perfectibility" (Op.

In a similar vein Rousseau or not other creatures

quality of

may be

(

like all

cit..

reformers ) maintains that, whether

said to think, "there

is

another very specific

which distinguishes [men from brutes], and which

no dispute. This

is

and that

Vol. 46, p. 178a-b).

will

admit

the faculty of self-improvement, which, by the help

of circumstances, gradually develops

all

the rest of our faculties, and

inherent in the species as in the individual: whereas a brute

88

is,

at the

is

end

GIANT GALAPAGOS TORTOISE ONE OF THE WORLD S OLDEST SURVIVING SPECIES The life of one generation of a brute animal contains the whole history of the species :

few months, all he will ever be during his whole life, and his species, end of a thousand years, exactly what it was the first year of that thousand" (On the Origin of Inequality, Vol. 38, p. 338b). True, chimpanzees may be taught to do some of the things that men do—but it is men who teach them, and the chimpanzees' descendants revert to the static chimpanzee condition. We know that the mountains and the stars are changeable— everything is— but the organic world, apart from man, is hardly more changeable of a

at the

than they.

Man

alone has a history.

The

life

of one generation of a brute

animal contains (unless biological mutation occurs) the whole history of the species. Biological evolution

is

so slow that, as

is

only an entomologist can distinguish the species of

commonly known, modern cockroach

from their fossilized ancestors of two hundred fifty million years ago. "In one out of the million or so animal species," says Sir Julian Huxley, "mind developed to a stage at which it gave its possessor the power for true speech and conceptual thought. The result was man. With this, a new method of evolutionary change was introduced— cumulative change in the behaviour and achievements of a social group by mentally transmitted tradition, instead of change in the potentialities of individuals by physi-

On

cally transmitted systems of nucleoproteins."

species

is

now

this view, "the

human

the spearhead of the evolutionary process on earth, the only

portion of the stuff of which our planet

is

made which

is

capable of

further progress."^

This "radically phase,"

is

new phase

of evolution, the

nothing but historical change.

Its

human

or psycho-social

method, says Huxley, con-

by and cultures maintain themselves and develop." Observing that man's mental powers cannot have changed appreciably since the Paleohthic period, Huxley, hke other social scientists, ascribes change and its acceleration to the cumulative genius arising from sists

of "cumulative tradition, forming the basis of that social heredity

means

1

New

of

which human

Bottles for

societies

New Wine (New

York: Harper

89

&

Brothers, 1957), pp. 102-103.

a

Ati Essay

on Time

speech and conceptual thought; each generation of men is the beneficiary knowledge of all the generations that went before. And each new piece of recombinaand combination in serves, doors) (like a key that fits many tion with other pieces, to

This "pyramiding"

advance knowledge

in a variety of fields.

more or less orderly accelthe Lower Paleolithic period

process easily explains a

Huxley speculates that in a major cultural change required something of the order of a million years; by the late Upper Paleolithic period, nearer ten thousand years; and in historic times, something like a century. But he notes that during the last century each decade has seen at least one major change: photography, the theory of evolution, the electromagnetic theory with its appHeration of change.

and power, the germ theory of disease, the cinema, radioactivity and the new theories of matter and energy, wireless and television, the internal combustion engine, chemical synthetics, and atomic fission. "And," he concludes, "there is as yet no sign of the rate of cations in electric light

acceleration slowing down."-

On tempo

the contrary, since he wrote those words several years ago, the of cultural

change— and not

just in application

and elaboration

of

techniques— has become faster than ever. To the ancient who said, "This too shall pass," the man of 1963 might reply, "Very wellbut don't we even get a good look at it first?" Not only does the durable not endure, but the gradual character of change seems to be swept scientific

away, and with it the breathing space, the elbowroom to achieve a sense of relationship with the new. Life in 1963 is a little like a three-ring circus

come

to a country town,

with

its

succession of breathless impossibilities

in the air, and the band blarcacophony into the wild bewilderment. The only diflFerence is that there is no ordered reality to return to outside the tent. No single theory of social change accounts for the explosive character of the changes since World War II. Some of the causes are clear: on the one hand, the pent-up potentialities of the prewar period; on the other, the impetus to technological development which war itself provided— an impetus which (at the stage then reached in weaponry) placed the

here, there, everywhere, on the

ing

ground and

its

decisive battlefield in the scientific laboratory for the

In

little

more than three

first

time in history.

years, military necessity "split the

atom"—

fundamental achievement that prewar physicists had thought would take half a century.

that physics, chemistry, and biochemistry had all reached development in which they stood on the brink of great advancement through their integration. This integration— or at least this interIt is clear also

stages of

relationship—was already under

Second World Wars, 2

Ibid., pp.

in

way

in the period

which the breakdown

22-23.

90

between the

First

and

of tightly departmentalized

)

The Tempo research was proceeding apace.

of History

And

the Cold

War

provided (and con-

tinues to provide, in always increasing amounts) funds

and

facilities in

war-related fields— including medicine— which had never before been available to research. all

Given these gigantic impulses, and the geometric progression in which each new truth unlocks a dozen others, there seems still to remain a mysterious ingredient in the phenomenal onrush of change— which

is no more than to say that there seems still to remain a "magic chemistry" in man. Prof. Hornell Hart, in Technology and Social Change, cites as one of the factors of speed-up "the intensity of the need or desire for the solution of various problems."^ The Cold War may be said to provide the in-

tensity of need; certainly the political crisis of the past fifteen years, un-

precedented in both its magnitude and its unrelieved tension, is concurrent with the apparent conversion of all change into a "race." But how explain the accelerated desire?

Has a new mood seized upon men, some-

thing like that of the age of discovery that followed Columbus, a

mood

compounded, perhaps, of rejection of the past (and even of the present) and recklessness, or even desperation, bom of the threat of nuclear destruction? Or is the impetus something more optimistic—the release of man's drive to catch up with the revolutions of our time? In any case, a release of human potential is taking place of an order that calls to mind Aladdin and his lamp. All the Faustian dreams and terrors are invoked in man's headlong pursuit of mastery— mastery of the universe, of the social order, and ( tagging along ever further behind of himself. Ours is a time full of foreboding, of hope, and of prophecy. In the midst of the uprush so perfectly symbolized by the modern rocket, a mounting conflict of interpretation, prognosis, and advice pours forth from the incessantly turning presses, from the statesman's podium, the politician's platform, and the pastor's pulpit. And men turn back to the past— to that ancient history of equally ancient

words .

.

.

we

now— for

fifty

years ago or five thousand, both

understanding. They pause and ponder the

of the ancient prophet:

stumble at noon day as

"We

wait for

in the night

THE IDEA OF PROGRESS

IN

.

light, .

."

but behold obscurity

(Isa. 59:9-10).

ANCIENT TIMES

of Revelation, the new ways of Babylon ( and Tyre and Sidon and Jerusalem) did not at all represent what Hegel called "change ... for the better, an impulse of perfectibility"; still less, Rousseau's "faculty of self-improvement." True, the rich were "clothed in fine linen, and purple, and scarlet, and decked with gold, and precious stones, and pearls" (Rev. 18:16), and their lives pervaded by luxury unknown to ancient Moses; but these novelties were more of

According to the prophet of

3

New

York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, Inc., 1957, p. 49.

91

An Essay on Time the order of sybaritic splendors than anything that elevated the human condition as a whole, materially or spiritually. To the prophet, they were

was "fallen," and had become "the habitation of devils, and the hold of every foul spirit" (Rev. 18:2). He saw social change as change for the worse ( as had the earher Jewish prophets ) if history had a direction, it was toward the destruction of the world by a wrathful god. The concept of social change as improvement or progress is first found in the secular and scientific thought of the Greeks. In the fourth century arts and sciences have B.C., Aristotle noted that "changes in the certainly been beneficial; medicine, for example, and gymnastic, and That every other art and craft have departed from traditional usage. improvement has occurred is shown by the fact that old customs are The remains of ancient laws which exceedingly simple and barbarous have come down to us are quite absurd. ... It would be ridiculous to signs that the city

;

.

.

.

.

.

rest

.

.

.

.

contented with [the] notions" of the "primaeval inhabitants" of the

earth (Politics, Vol.

The ferment

of

9,

pp. 464d-465a).

change

Athens during the "Golden Age" was

in ancient

such that the Athenians have been called "the ancient Americans." The Corinthians described them as "addicted to innovation," and observed

by swiftness alike in conception and beyond their power, and daring beyond their judgment ... A scheme unexecuted is with them a positive loss, a successful enterprise a comparative failure. They alone are enabled to call a thing hoped for a thing got, by the speed with which they act upon their resolutions. [They have] little opportunity for enjoying, being ever engaged in getting and to them laborious occuthat "their designs are characterized

execution.

.

.

.

They

are adventurous

.

.

.

is

less of

engineering,

.

.

a misfortune than the peace of a quiet life"

History of the Peloponnesian War, Vol.

Rome saw

.

.

.

pation

.

still

6, p.

(

Thucydides,

366b-c).

greater changes than Athens, in law, in war, and in

not in philosophy and the

arts. Within a few centuries of was transformed from a small settlement on the banks of the Tiber into a vast empire* But even at the height of its affluence, there were old Romans living in the country, much in the manner of their ancestors, who would perhaps have felt more at home among the "ancient" Greeks than amid the delights of the imperial city, with its exotic linens and silks, spices and swords, drugs and wines; here, too, as in Babylon, the changes were not fundamental but superficial. The characteristic alteration in the mode of men's lives was quantitative: they had the traditional goods in greater abundance and variety than their forebears. In a world which lived by war, there were many mighty convulsions, but no Roman, in a single lifetime, experienced anything like the change from the horse and buggy to jet propulsion. In the ancient Judaeo-Christian and Graeco-Roman cultures, the focus was upon the individual rather than upon society. Changes in the life of its

founding,

if

it

92

The Tempo

of History

an individual had a tempo with which no social change could compare. man might span the gulf from

In the balance between freedom and fate,

perfect happiness to perfect misery between sunup and sundown, and

within a lifetime

plummet all

(

much

or

less

)

wing his way to the heights of virtue or was the change that their tragedians

to the depths of vice. This

celebrated, their scholars investigated, their preceptors taught.

The

historical spirit of these ages (and of those that immediately followed) saw social change as cyclical in kind. Plato's hypothetical circularity of government, from despot to democracy and back to despot ( see The Republic, Vol. 7, pp. 403a-413a), has its echo in Virgil's "majestic roll of circling centuries" {The Eclogues, Vol. 13, p. 14a), and its counterpart in Aristotle's supposition that "probably each art and each science has ." often been developed as far as possible and has again perished .

(Metaphysics, Vol.

Macedonia,

8, p.

Rome— all

rose and

was hardly advanced from hardship triumphed;

.

605a). Egypt, Babylonia, Assyria, Persia, Greece, fell,

and

their condition, after they fell,

that of their origination. Cultures schooled in

the

fruit

induced decadence and led

of

their

triumph was

overthrow by

to their

new

luxury,

which

cultures schooled

in hardship.

And

rise in long,

slow season against the victors, unless the victors had had

the defeated, reduced once

more

to hardship,

would

the forethought to exterminate or disperse them, in which case the newly

softened would

draw down upon themselves the aggression

of other

hardened cultures (which would go the same way). Thus the advancement of society was accepted as something rigidly circumscribed— and fabulously slow. The Athenian stranger, in Plato's Laws, asks Cleinias how much time he thinks "has elapsed since cities first existed," and the two of them agree that it must have been "vast and incalculable" and that during this period "thousands and thousands of cities [have] come into being and as many perished" and "each ." The Athenof them had every form of government many times over. ian then asks, "Would not all implements have then perished and every other excellent invention of political or any other sort of wisdom have utterly disappeared?" Cleinias answers, "Why, yes. For it is evident that the arts were unknown during ten thousand times ten thousand years." Even their recollection would have vanished, says Cleinias, and the restoration of the race "was not made all in a moment, but little by little, .

.

.

.

.

during a very long period of time" (Vol.

7, p.

.

.

664a-d).

THE PATTERN OF CHANGE

The

great changes that took place, in ancient no less than in pre-

historic times,

were

largely the results of

commonplace

trial

and

even of accident. The other-worldliness with which scientific work was regarded is nowhere better illustrated than in the life of Archimedes, who, according to Plutarch, produced his wonderful maerror, or

93

SYRACUSANS USED AKCHIMEDES BURNING MIRRORS TO FEND OFF ROMAN ATTACK Archimedes produced his machines of war and peace "not as matters of any importance, but as mere amusements in geometry .

.

.

repudiating as ignoble the whole trade of engineering, and every sort of art that lends itself to mere use and profit"

chines of

war and peace— including the lever— "not

importance, but as mere amusements in geometry.

as matters of .

.

."

any

Plutarch con-

"Though these inventions had obtained him the renown of more than human sagacity, he yet would not deign to leave behind him any commentary or writing on such subjects; but, repudiating as sordid and ignoble the whole trade of engineering, and every sort of art that lends itself to mere use and profit, he placed his whole aflPection and ambition in those purer speculations where there can be no reference to tinues:

.

the vulgar needs of

The Greeks'

life.

.

."

.

.

(Lives, Vol. 14, pp. 252b, 253d).

toward scientific research— and the scientists' contempt of utility— was a long time dying. For a millennium after Archimedes, this separation of mechanics from geometry inhibited fundamental lofty attitude

technological progress and in

was a

still

some areas repressed

it

altogether.

But there

greater obstacle to change until the very end of the Middle

Ages: the organization of society. The social system of fixed class relationships that prevailed through the Middle Ages (and in some areas much longer) itself stultified improvement. Under this system, the laboring masses, in exchange for the bare necessities of life, did all the productive work, while the privileged few— priests, nobles, and kings— concerned themselves only with ownership and the maintenance of their own posi-

94

The Tempo tion.

of History

In the interest of their prerogatives they did achieve considerable

progress in defense, in warmaking, in go\ernment, in trade, in the arts of leisure,

had no

and

in the extraction of labor

familiarity

hand, the laborers,

from

their dependents, but they

with the processes of production.

who were

On

the

other

familiar with manufacturing techniques,

had

improve or increase production to the advantage of their masters. "Thus, with one class possessing the requisite knowledge and experience, but lacking incentive and leisure, and the other class lacking the knowledge and experience, there was no means by which technical progress could be achieved."* The whole ancient world was built upon this relationship— a relationship as sterile as it was inhuman. The availability of slaves nullified the need for more eflBcient machinery. In many of the commonplace fields of

no incentive

human

to

endeavor, actual stagnation prevailed

Not all the glory that was Greece and the grandeur that was Rome for thousands of years.

could develop the windmill or contrive so simple an instrument as the wheelbarrow-

products of the tenth and thirteenth centuries respectively.

For about twenty-five centuries, two-thirds power of the horse was lost because he wasn't shod, and much of the strength of the ox was wasted because his harness wasn't modified to fit his shoulders. For more than five thousand years, sailors were confined to rivers and coasts by a primitive steering mechanism which required remarkably of the

Httle

to

alteration

become

(in

a rudder.

the thirteenth century)

With any ingenuity

at

all, the ancient plough could have been put on wheels and the ploughshare shaped to bite and turn the sod instead of merely

scratching it— but the ingenuity wasn't forth-

coming. like the

And the villager of the Middle Ages, men who first had fire, had a smoke

hole in the center of the straw-

thatched (

roof

of

his

which he shared with

or

one-room his animals

GREEK

WOMEN AT THE LOOM.

VASE PAINTING, FIFTH CENTXTRY From 2500 B.C. to the end

reed-

Roman Empire, the great advances were simple smelting, the primitive lathe and loom of the

.

dwelling )

,

while the medieval charcoal burner

made himself a hut of small branches. From 2500 b.c. to the end of the Roman Empire, the condition of most men's lives changed at an imperceptible crawl. The great advances were (like his Stone

4

S. Lilley,

Age

ancestor)

Men, Machines and History (London: Cobbett

95

B.C.

Press, 1948), p. 18.

.

.

An

Essay on Time

simple smelting, the primitive lathe and loom, the very limited (and inefficient ) use of animal power, and, in late Roman times, the adaptation

water wheel to milling. The next thousand years, after the fall of Rome, witnessed only a modest increase in the pace of historical change. The great innovations were the clock, the compass, the rudder, the blast of the

furnace, and, in the mid-fifteenth century, the single most significant

made to the preservation, diflFusion, and advancement human culture— Gutenberg's printing press and movable type. By the seventeenth century, the university had come into being (Bol-

contribution ever of

ogna

Cambridge, and Salamanca in the academy and the laboratory, but they had httle or no effect on daily life. Eyeglasses had been known and used for hundred of years, but the principle of the lens was not adapted to the microscope until around 1600. Even then the doctors ignored it, as they did the seventeenth-century thermometer (for almost two hundred years!) and the stethoscope (first described in 1819). The first fundamental change accepted by medicine since the Greeks was vaccination, introduced by Edward Jenner in 1796. in the eleventh century, Paris,

thirteenth century), as well as the scientific

THE MOMENT OF BALANCE At the end of the Middle Ages, most men in all lands lived such JTjL unvaried lives, from generation to generation, that they would have been hard put to believe that the condition of man ever changed. Nearly all of them were as illiterate as their earliest ancestors. They had no knowledge of history, or even of geography. Men never traveled or thought of traveling; like their grandfathers and grandchildren, they died where they were born and in the same unmultiplying trades— farmer, herdsman, miller, carpenter, weaver, blacksmith, and cobbler. Bakeries, meat markets, and tailor shops were unknown outside the great cities. Says Arnold J. Toynbee, "The social structure and cultural character of these societies was singularly uniform. Each of them consisted of a mass of peasants, living and working under much the same conditions as their forefathers on the morrow of the invention of agriculture some six to eight ."^ thousand years back, and a small minority of rulers Even so, change was going on, as it always has, and in the century or two preceding the Industrial Revolution the rate of change began to .

.

increase. In the first half of the eighteenth century men did live diflFerently ^— if not from their grandfathers, then from their grandfathers' grandfathers. At last the efficient use of the power of water, wind, and animals had come slowly to fruition. The human slave was long since gone in most places, and slave labor was confined largely to America and the colonial societies. The factory had come into being, using an ever

5 Civilization on Trial

(

1948), in The Great Ideas Today 1961, p. 543.

96

i^j;

MEDIEVAL FESTIVAL Free time icas spent simply, in festivals, feast days, and out of ivhich folk music and folk art developed

increasing

amount

fairs,

of the three forms of other-than-human

ever increasing variety of

\v3.\s.

The horse was worth

power

in

an

ten slaves, a good

Common tools had taken their compass and rudder led to the world-wide exchange of products and the commercial re\olution from which the early American scene took so much of its color and character. The Age of Power had arrived, marking the end of the disciplined guild system (with all its obstacles to change) and the rise of the wage worker. In one ver>' profound sense this was— as Lewis Mumford maintains— "a large step downward," a change for the worse.*^ Artisanship, individual and corporate, as an element in production began to give way to the objective of profit on the part of both the manufacturer and the worker. As specialization proceeded, the incentive of fine handiwork was sacrificed to the incentive of quantit>^ But for the conditions of daily life the loss was more than offset in three distinct ways: by the inventiveness of the free technician, by the slowly rising standard of living, and, most important of all, by the alleviation of human toil and by an increase in free time. This time was spent simply, in festi\'als, feast days, and fairs, out of which folk music and folk art developed, and with them a respect for the lowly peasant and craftsman as a person, a subject, and an appreciator. Labor was no longer the unrelieved lot of the many. (In Catholic countries the number of holidays for workers rose to as man)' as a hundred a year.) And while water wheel or windmill worth a hundred.

modern form, and the

6 Technics and Civilization

ship's

(New

York: Harcourt, Brace

97

&

Co., 1943), p. 146.

An Essay on Time Huxley says life

of the

whole past prior

to our

own time

has generally been, as Hobbes described

"

short,'

it,

that "up

nasty,

till

now

brutish and

students of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries disagree

with him radically. Short it

was

may have been, but nasty and brutish, as it had been, and as be again in the time of the Industrial Revolution, it was not. The

it

to

energy of these two post-slave and pre-industrial centuries, says Mumford, "did not vanish in smoke nor were its products thrown quickly on junk-heaps: by the seventeenth century it had transformed the woods

and swamps of northern Europe into a continuous vista of wood and field, and garden: an ordered human landscape replaced the bare meadows and the matted forests, while the social necessities of man had created hundreds of new cities, solidly built and commodiously arranged, cities whose spaciousness and order and beauty still challenge, even in their decay, the squaHd anarchy of the new towns that succeeded them. ... In every department there was equilibrium bet\\'een the ."*^ static and the dynamic. The refinements of taste and smell and village

.

.

sight came, for the earth.

first

.

.

.

time in history, to the

There were flowers

common

when food is scarce, people do not grow flowers in its Any consideration of the tempo of history must pause this equilibrium, this "moment of balance." Man had gone

for

so slowly that the aeons

saw no

place. to

contemplate

slowly forward,

substantial transformation of his

the end of the Middle Ages.

life until after

people of the

in every garden, a sign of general well-being,

Then the

way

of

culture of the past—

change— began to touch the many and to bring them some few had always until then monopolized. On the whole, these possessions, these capabilities, were neither new nor spectacular. Their increase was a step-by-step affair. But there came a pointsomewhere in the tu^elfth and thirteenth centuries— when a few notable breaches were made in the tools and methods of the ages past. Their application was gradual, and the rate of social change increased until the dynamic had achieved a delicate adjustment with the static; the new had altered the old organically, co-operatively. The process had begun to carry men to a new plane without amazing them and without cutting them off from the customary. the cumulative

of the blessings that the

THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION eighteenth-century England harvests were good, food was cheap, and the people, says Harrison Brown, were in the main contented. But their contentment was not to last long. They were living on the edge of a new era which they did not in the least foresee: "The scientists, the

In

7

Op.

8 Op.

cit., cit.,

p. 16.

pp.

147-148.

98

The Tempo

of History

craftsmen, the engineers, and the manufacturers were, unaware of the

consequences, laying the foundations for a sequence of developments that to affect human society more drastically than any since

were destined

the beginnings of primitive agriculture. Within a few brief decades the

would be transformed to an extent undreamed of by peasant, madman."^ These few brief decades— at the end of the eighteenth century— marked the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. Human history shifted gears for the first time; in the next one hundred years the world as it always had been was swept away, and with it the way men looked at it and at themselves. It took a million years for the Age of Tools to arrive, and another five thousand for the Age of Power to spread through the civilized world and affect the age-old conditions of daily life and labor. But the few years from the 1820's to the 1860's saw the Age of Industry hurtle from infancy to maturity. So precipitate and profound were its effects that mankind is island

king, genius, or

still

struggling, perhaps hopelessly, to adjust to them.

The

new

Industrial Revolution

had four

distinct facets:

machines; the derivation of power from

new

the invention of

sources

(coal,

oil,

and hydroelectricity ) the improvement of the machines to exploit the new forms of power ( and the enlargement of industrial units to exploit the power more efficiently); and the staggering social and political consequences of that improvement and enlargement. The causes of the revolution were more complex: there was a tidal wave of study and imagination pent up by war and released by the downfall of Napoleon and the dawn of peace in 1815. The end of feudalism liberated commerce and manufacturing; this catalytic combination brought on the Industrial Revolution and tilted the cornucopia of technological creativity. The ;

inventions

came pouring

forth in unimaginable profusion,

first in

England,

then in the United States, and finally in the whole of western Europe.

The

pell-mell

advancement was

of

two

distinct,

if

co-operative, kinds:

the fundamental innovations, and the mechanization of ancient ways of labor. In the

first

category were whole

new

industries like the chemical

development of canning, refrigeration, synthetic dyes, medicinal compounds, the storage cell, telegraphy, the generator, and the electric engine; Portland cement and asphalt paving; vulcanization and the pneumatic tire; the steam engine and the highpressure boiler; the elevator; lithography, photography, and wood-pulp paper. Any one of these advances would have been the marvel of any whole century in the past. The steam engine alone changed human history, opening up seas and continents, building cities, bringing distant men and civilizations together for the first time, and moving people freely from their ancestral homes and habits. The steam railroad trans-

and

electrical,

involving

the

9 The Challenge of Man's Future (New York: The Viking

99

Press, 1954), p. 34.

An

Essay on Time

formed the United States from a seacoast

to a continent within a genera-

tion.

But more traumatic than any of these fundamental innovations— with its impact on transportation-

the exception of the steam engine and

was the adaptation

of almost all the traditional labor processes to the

machine: sewing, spinning, weaving, shoemaking, screw-making, planing, pen making, pinmaking, matchmaking, writing (with the typewriter), and printing. This across-the-board mechanization of productive processes created an absolutely

new

foundation for

human

labor.

productive machinery were easily enlarged to the end of more economic production, and the worker who, down the

The

giant units

of

had been employed in town or village, in his own home or shop, more recently, in the small manufactory, was drawn to the factories located, for better access to transportation and to markets, in the cities. With the transition to mining, manufacturing, and mechanical transportation as the dominant fields of economic activity, the Age of Grime began— grime and grit, and soot and smog, the man-made dust whose toxic effects were known only to the slaves in the mines and smelters of ages,

or

And

the earth became, as it has ever since been, But that was a minor evil compared with the creation of the urban tenement— and the ultimate conversion of most of the great cities of the world into great slums. The new industrial enterprises employed thousands, even tens of thousands of men, in a single jerry-built building or maze of buildings, and forced them, with their families, to find any lodging they could in jerry-built tenements

the ancient world.

a dirty place to live.

accessible to the job.

And the job itself was miserable. Machines, not men, governed the pace of work; machines, not art or sensitive human hands, governed the motion and shape of work; and machines, not feeling and fellowship, governed the relationsf!S>f workers. Money (as Marx said) was the only nexus between employer and employee, and there was neither tradition nor craftsmanship to protect the "human appendage" in his job; one man could perform the simple, repetitive motions of most machine labor as well as the next.

Working

life

was stripped

of every inherent

charm.

Thus the first fruit between working and

was the disjunction exists, and must exist, with the specialization of labor at the machine. The laborer's situation, while in many ways better, was in many ways worse than the ancient slave's. He had been emancipated from every tie, detached from of the Industrial Revolution living, a disjunction

which

still

every protective (as well as every oppressive) condition of the slave's existence.

He had now

neither master nor land with

himself and in which, however brutal both

found

his security.

The

tools of his trade

100

which

may have

to identify

been, he had

(which he had always been

The Age of Grime began and the ultimate conversion of the great cities of the world .

.

.

into great

slums

manage) were now monsters bolted Aiown to the floor of He was alienated, propertyless, even in the inverted sense of being another man's property. He had nothing to sell but his labor. Thus was bom Marx's "proletarian." The degraded conditions in which this degraded man, once an independent worker or co-worker, suddenly found himself were seemingly irremediable. The industrial cities were growing too fast for social ingenuity to do anything about them. There were some attempts to stem the degeneration, but it came largely from outside sources; the worker's pride in his life sank with his pride in his work, and he often surrendered himself to the squalor and disease that embraced him. Drunkenness, crime, and prostitution flourished. The long tradition of female gentility gave way to the harridan, the whore, and the wife and mother prematurely broken by domestic misery and the workbench. Family size decreased, and the divorce rate leapt. Social work came into being with able to

another man's factory.

101

An

Essay on Time

and the famous "Christmas basket," was hopelessly inadequate. True, the city was an escape from what Marx venomously called "the idiocy of rural life" (Manifesto of the Communist Party, Vol. 50, p. 421c), with its endless roimd of days, its crude amenities, and its narrow range

charity hospitals, foundling homes,

but

it

Not only did men have to move to the city for work, but Open-eyed they packed up their families, said good-bye that they and their forebears had known, and set out for the to all metropolis. They had heard of its terrors, and they believed what they had heard, but the pull was irresistible. Millions of men uprooted themselves and left behind them forever everything comprehensible, everything that, with the warmth of the well-worn, comforted and consoled. It is easy to say that these men were without foresight. But who wasn't? Had the whole of mankind been able to assemble in council, foreseeing all the consequences of the Industrial Revolution, would they have called it oflF? Not likely. For all the consequences included both its short-term human suffering and its long-term liberation of mankind from the age-old slavery to the combination of grinding labor and inaccessible culture, incurable illness and early death. The new machines, however brutal and brutalizing they might be, reflected (and in their turn encouraged) the great breakthrough of knowledge heralded by Newton in the early eighteenth century. Knowledge would be the great emancipator of man from the strangle hold of all of the past, and would lead him from peak to peak through the application of the rigorous method of science to the problems of moral and political behavior. The ancients' cyclical theory of human history was discarded for once and all. The new liberal view of history was a "vision of a world progressively ." This vision, redeemed by human power from its classic ailments. Charles Frankel notes, was not universally shared, and in our own day seems to be losing some of its appeal, but it dominated social thought for generations, above all in the United States; "For more than a century, something like this view of history provided most Americans with roughly consistent attitudes toward the past, with a conception of the over-all direction in which history was— or ought to be— moving, and with ideas about the nature and conditions of human betterment. Ajid no other view of human history has been more peculiarly appropriate to American experience, or better able to provide Americans with an image of the place of their most modern, technological, and democratic of countries in the total design of world history. We have had fewer fixed traditions than other countries, and more room to make decisions on the grounds of efficiency and individual happiness. Applying human skill to the mastery of nature has been our principal occupation for a century and of pleasures.

they wanted

to.

.

.

a half."^" 10 The Case for

Modern Man (New York: Harper &

102

Brothers, 1956), pp. 29, 37-38.

The Tempo

of History

THE AGE OF PROGRESS

T

hus the Age of Science flowed into the Age of Progress, carrying new stream the spirit of the Age of Reason. The "reHgion of reason" goes back to John Locke in the seventeenth century, and to Voltaire, Hume, Rousseau, and Gibbon in the eighteenth. Of these great rationahsts the true progressive was Gibbon, for whom human history into the

adduced "the pleasing conclusion increased and

still

and perhaps the

Roman Empire,

that

every age of the world has

increases the real wealth, the happiness, the knowledge,

virtue, of the

human

Vol. 40, p. 634c).

race"

A

(

The Decline and

Fall of the

century later the greatest single

contributor to the doctrine of progress, Charles Darwin, echoed this

view:

"Man

has risen, though by slow and interrupted steps, from a lowly

condition to the highest standard as yet attained by

morals and reHgion" {The Descent of Man, Vol. 49, Certainly no happier belief had ever lodged

and

him

p.

in

knowledge,

330c).

itself

in

the

human

seems fair to suppose that even the industrial worker, transplanted from one era into another, was warmed by the hope for improvement, not, perhaps, for himself, but for his children and grandchildren. The present was relegated to the past; the promise was all. Everything pointed toward the increase of social democracy and the breast,

progressive

it

equalization

of

social

conditions.

What

Mill

called

the

awakened interest in improvement" was the heart of all serious discussion. Only a little more than a hundred years before, none but the wildest Utopians had supposed that man's lot might be altered, much less that a time might come, short of biblical promise, in which all men might have the essentials of life. The first half of the nineteenth century converted the promise to possibility, if not to reality. Marx and Engels

"generally

observed in 1848 that industrial capitalism "during

its

rule of scarce one

hundred years has created more massive and more colossal productive forces than have all preceding generations together" (Manifesto of the

Communist

Party, Vol. 50, p. 421d).

THE PERIOD OF CONSOLIDATION

Between

1863 and 1913, the world adapted itself— technologically, at the new tempo of history induced by the Industrial Revolution, But the tempo of change was, at its new level, a relatively even one. The machine and its uses proliferated. The modern city, with least— to

packed millions, began to take livable, if unand tenement life, however dreary and desolate, began to be stabilized. The Industrial State was in full flower. Manufactured goods of every kind came cascading from the factories to find a hungry and ever more e£Fective market as wages rose. The new fuels— oil and electricity— transformed the power unit from year to year. Constant improvement in the steam and internal combustion

its

facilities

for closely

beautiful, form;

103

An

Essay on Time

engines produced bigger and more efficient factories and smaller and more efficient vehicles. Within a half century of the invention of the bicycle,

the automobile was

common, and with

it

the assembly-line

factory. With the new gyroscopic compass, huge ocean liners united the hemispheres in luxurious travel. Iron displaced wood and stone

completely in the construction of ships and railroad cars, of bridges,

and

of skyscrapers.

The pace

of inventions

and discoveries continued

to accelerate as

the consoHdation of the nineteenth-century breakthroughs went forward. The Age of Electricity arrived, with its networks of power stations and

lamp and the amplffier, the electric railroad and the streetcar, the wireless, the gramophone, and the telephone. The really phenomenal acceleration was in medicine. So primitive had the general care of health been for so many centuries that the making of different shoes for right and left feet had only begun in the first half of the nineteenth century. Now at last the inventions and discoveries of the past two centuries ( such as anesthesia ) were accepted in medical practice, their adoption expedited by the epochal development of the germ theory of disease begun by Pasteur and Koch in the seventies and eighties. In concert with the host of new instruments for diagnosis and treatment— including Rontgen's X-ray in 1895— the modernization of medicine went forward so rapidly, compared with all past ages, that the veil of mystery seemed to drop all at once from the ills of the flesh, and the prospect was plain that human suffering would be universal benefits of the incandescent

its

alleviated to a degree never in all history imagined.

Those

fifty

years— 1863 to 1913— were more than anything else the age

of implementation of the sciences

pace of change was greatest

and technics

just preceding.

The

over-

permeation of men's daily lives by the new things of the factories and the laboratories. Toil pure and simple was lightened, and a host of new conveniences was introduced. The changing pace of Iffe, however, proceeded more placidly than it had for the peasant all at once transferred from the feudal conditions all

in the steady

of the eighteenth century to the factory system in the nineteenth.

Seen from the infinite distance of fifty years later, the world of 1913 was a tranquil place, even a quaint one; a world in which the stamp of stability was still dominant. Most men changed their jobs seldom, their place of residence still more seldom. Babies were born— and old folks died— at home. Few married women worked (only four per cent in the United States in 1890); they "kept house," and keeping house meant, after the care of the children, cooking and baking and mending for

Family status revolved around having a part-time girl heavy cleaning and laundry, done, of course, by hand. Children were still seen and not heard, and the male authority was imchallenged in the home.

their husbands.

to help with the

104

ASSEMBLY LINE AT FORD MOTOR COMPANY IX 1913 Within a half century of the invention of the bicycle, the automobile was common, and with it the assembly line factory

There were no picture windows. There was no wall-to-wall carpeting, no washing machine or dryer, no refrigerator, no vacuum cleaner, no electric iron, no electric percolator, no automatic cooker (or automatic anything) in most middle-class homes. There was nothing oven-ready or powdered or instant or frozen ( except ice in the icebox ) Nickelodeons were everywhere, -and movies jerked and flickered to the accompaniment of a piano which jingled spasmodically from joy to grief to terror to ecstasy to despair and back again. There were the stereopticon and the decidedly low-fi "victrola." There were band concerts combined with the Sunday walk in the park, and the enchanted family that had one took its gas buggy out of its weekday garage for a ride— with a stop at .

the ice-cream parlor.

New times, to be sure, but hardly frenzied; and still less fearful. When conditions were good, they were bound to get better; when they were bad, they were

bound to get better. It was a world in which Europe for almost a century, and in America for half a century (except for Teddy Roosevelt's "splendid little war" in Cuba). To some it seemed that war was done with forever. In the United States, with its traditional rejection of a standing army and its two great oceans to protect it forever, the mihtary consisted of an insignificant, isolated officer corps and a small rabble of soldiers and

peace had endured

sailors recruited

still

in

among

the down-and-outers. In 1913 the United States

Army owned

seven airplanes— at a cost of $60,000. Sin and sorrow there was still, even in America.

tion of the population,

access to any of the

urban and

new

rm-al, lived in

A

considerable propor-

shanty poverty without

splendors of the age. Racial segregation was

105

TILLIE S PUNCTURED ROMANCE Movies jerked and flickered to the accompaniment of a piano which jingled spasmodically from joy to grief and back again

complete

and

unquestioned.

But

Americans

generally

thought

of

themselves as the happiest of people and of peoples. Unburdened by a

by imperial ambition and commitment, by a profand nobiHty, they lived, unlike any people before them, without the specter of taxation pursuing them. There was no income tax, no inheritance tax, no sales tax; men might accumulate fortunes, and leave them intact to their children. Along with peace, the arts of peace flourished. They may not have been adventurous— neither the Victorian nor the Edwardian period was culturally notable— but they were solid. Compulsory public education, at least through the primary grades, was long established in the advanced nations and, in America, if nowhere else, men who had not gone to high school dreamed of sending their military establishment, ligate royalty

children to college. Industrialization had transferred the scepter of economic power from Europe to America. In the half century before World War I, England, cramped by tradition, by a shortage of insular resources, and by the age of its plant, lost its leadership to an aggressive Germany, which was soon overtaken by the United States. The Americans had every thingland, resources, and, above all, the adventurous spirit in which their nation was established, a spirit unhampered by class restraints and aristocratic caution. It was the frontier spirit of individual independence and self-reliance, illuminated by the egalitarianism that offered the palm to the man of ambition, energy, and daring no matter what his origin. The American was a plunger into the unknown and into the new. To his own ingenuity he added the willingness to try anything invented anywhere else, and many European processes were adopted and developed

106

The Tempo

of History at home. The country were cut down for steel mills for new cities. "American know-

United States long before they were tried

in the

was growing Hke no

other. Virgin forests

of the latest design, for

new

factories,

how" was, and remained, an astonishment to the rest of the world. Americans did not work harder than other people, but they worked faster and more efficiently. Every adventurer, good or bad, made for the prodigious land where every adventure was possible. But

this hectic individualism,

with

all its glories,

and freedom the

fore-

most, produced in the opening years of the twentieth century a discon-

phenomenon. Mammoth industry required mammoth investment. and unregulated, was producing a new class of industrial barons— "robber barons," the reformers called them— who acquired monopoly control of the country's resources in coal, iron, steel, oil, and lumber, and in the industries those resources fed. As individuals, they might (like Andrew Carnegie) have an interest in the common weal— or they might not. And while workingmen's wages might rise, and the American standard of living surpass the rest of the world's,

certing

Private enterprise, unrestricted

the spectacle of these socially irresponsible multimillionaires— with their

absolute control, not only of the nation's material resources, but of the

hundreds of thousands of men— awakened in America a social protest that had long been in ferment in Europe. Social change— more properly, political change— had lagged far behind the hurrying pace of technological and industrial progress. But at last it came. By 1913, the demand for fundamental political change in the United States was overwhelming. Woodrow Wilson ofiFered an eloquent expression of these demands, on behalf of what he called "the New Freedom":

destinies of thousands or

Our

life

life

that

has broken away from the past. The life of America is not the it was twenty years ago; it is not the life that it was ten years ago. We have changed our economic conditions, absolutely, from top to bottom; and, with our economic society, the organization of our life. The old political formulas do not fit the present problems; they read now like documents taken out of a forgotten age .... We have come upon a very different age from any that preceded us. The old order changeth— changeth under our very eyes, not quietly and equably, but swiftly and with the noise and heat and tumult of reconstruction. ^^ .

THE WORLD

If

VV^ARS

.

.

AND THEIR AFTERMATH

the Industrial Revolution was the great watershed of man's technolo-

World War I was the watershed of his social history. world mesmerized by Science and Progress mocked the mysticism of religious sects which had long predicted that the world would end in the year 1914; fifty years later the world isn't so sure that it didn't end in gical history.

A

11 The

New Freedom (New

York: Doubleday, Page

107

& Company, 1914),

pp. 3-5, 29.

An

Essay on Time

KEVOLUTIOX.\RIES BEING SHOT DOWN IN PETROGR.\D, 1917 First World War saw the leap of the sleeping giant of Russia from the oldest surviving kitid of society, feudalism, to one unborn, communism

The

.

.

.

1914. The first war to involve the whole world saw the collapse of Western European domination and its transfer to an uninterested and unwilling

United

States. It saw, too, the leap of the sleeping giant of Russia

from

imbom, communthe tempo of history!) But it saw the idea of progress was shaken to

the oldest sur\iving kind of society, feudalism, to one

{There was an acceleration of something more subtle and seismic:

ism.

its

foundations.

The European dream of peace was shattered, along with the American dream of isolation. The triumph of the Industrial Revolution was seen be double-edged with the destructive power" of man on a scale hitherto of: poison gas, hquid fire, bombs from the sky. Most significantly of all, the long, hard climb of man celebrated by the humanists of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries— pre-eminently characterized by the emergence of the individual as a person and his life as a thing of inalienable worth— was dealt a body blow by the four-year slaughter of millions of young men in the trenches. Man's imagination fails, as his to

undreamed

spirit recoils, in

the face of the fact that

million mobilized ^^'hate\^er else

more than

half the sixty-five

men were casualties between 1914 and 1918. ^^'orld War I was, it was a sweeping stimulus

to a

kind of frenz>' that overtook the civihzed world. The moral patterns of centuries collapsed

all at once. Speculation in personal, no less than in replaced the ageless quest for security. The world-wide depression followed; social systems trembled everywhere, and in some places fell. In Germany, the culture of Diirer and Kant and Goethe, of

economic,

life

108

The Tempo

of History

Bach and Beethoven, of Koch and Einstein, was swept away by racial and religious bigotry, and by the reversion to the mystique of the fiery crusade. With Nazism, the nineteenth-century faith in progress suffered another bitter setback.

World War II engulfed the whole world in the blood of burning This was something new: total war, in which not only soldiers and battlefields but also civilians and all the machinery of production were prime targets. The dead would be forever uncountable, the homeless millions likewise. The war ended with the scientific triumph of Einstein's new physics— the bombs that leveled Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Atomic power opened the portals and escorted man into a new age. The atmosphere and the stratosphere were conquered. With jet propulsion, the one world of the Industrial Revolution became one city; men crossed it now for a luncheon meeting and went to their offices in the cities.

from "suburbs" a thousand miles away. Nothing could any longer happen anywhere— no fluctuation, no invention, no convulsion— that did not happen everywhere. An election— or even a speech— in one country toppled governments in other countries and on other continents. So frenzied was the tempo of history now that there were only two ways to try to keep up with it. On the political side, there was personal "city"

The

NAZI STORM TROOPERS "Germans! Defend yourselves! Do not buy from Jews!"

signs say,

109

An

Essay on Time

government, with the debates that had taken months and years in parliaments giving way to the necessity for quick executive decision not only but also in the free societies. On the business and industrial side, there were computers, able to operate factories, refineries, and offices and also to predict the consequences of sudden changes in the totalitarian

enough to meet those consequences. And between personal government and the computer, the role of the citizen and the individual shrank at a stupendous rate even in those societies proudly and tena-

rapidly

ciously dedicated to individualism.

National governments everywhere reduced the federal principle to almost a nullity. Local and provincial governments withered as central

government grew monstrous. Nor was it war alone, or international tension, that produced this overwhelming centralization. Technology would have done it in any case. The modern techniques of long-distance transportation and communication had long since established new "natural monopolies," which, in turn, evoked new nation-wide controls. Government by national commission was inevitable. How— in the second half of the twentieth century— could state or local authority deal with nation-wide radio and television, telephone, telegraph? How, indeed, could even national authority deal with the corporation that was as much at home in one country as in another? In science,

new

objectives took the place of old.

and the

With the surface

above it all mastered, the universe was the only direction left into which man's appetite for physical expansion could be gratified. The Space Age was upon man. There was no time for adjustment, and what was adjusted to was already archaic before the program for adjustment was oflE the drawing boards. The first program of Telstar— international television— was broadcast from the village of Andover, Maine, where hand-crank telephones were still in use. So fast and far had the "second Industrial Revolution" of the computer proceeded that men and animals together were now supplying almost no work energy in America. Industry and business, big and little, were confronted with the challenge, "Automate or die." Modern machines that men operated— or that operated themselves—had to be replaced by the still more modern machines that operated other machines. The capital outlay, the waste of obsolescence, and the permanent disemployment of workers were of the earth, the waters

beneath

it,

air

staggering considerations.

The railroads had had forty years to adapt the Diesel engine of 1892 to their commercial needs and capacities; but the international air lines of 1963, still in debt for their newly purchased jet fleets, were confronted with the technological readiness of supersonic flight. What was man

to

do— throw

rocks at the

new machines

century ancestors?

110

like his eighteenth-

The Tempo

of History

THE NEW TEMPO

The the

geometric progression of the tempo of history was

mathematicians would

call a

power

now what

progression. But the pace

change was only s\Tnptomatic or, at most, secondarily change in histor}" in the few years since the world recovered from World War II. The great change is something deeper of technological

causal, of the great

far than the discover^' of cortisone— or the "invention" of the electric

toothbrush.

It

may be

s\Tnbolized

by the

rhetorical question of the dis-

"What

tinguished British commentator Barbara Ward:

is

left

that

is

stable?"

In recent years, a kind of psychological contagion has been run-

ning like wildfire through

all

Things of every kind

of man's activities.

changing— drastically. \\'hy? Why the "astonishing"— as Gunnar Myrdal calls it— movement of the Negro toward racial integration "after are

Why

decades of stagnation"?

six

the rush to the

cities of

the people of

the underdeveloped countries? ^^'hy the great migration to California?

Why, not of harder

only the arms race and the space race, but also the "rat race"

and harder

among

li\-ing

those peoples

who have

Why the precipitate rise in

achieved the possibiHt)' of leisure?

at

last

addiction to

stimulants and tranquilizers, the spiraling dependence on alcohol and narcotics? Why the health fixation in one of the world's healthiest societies? Why the peak-to-peak rise of crime, di\orce, suicide, and ps)-choneurosis?

Some what

is

of these

phenomena

less easily

explained

are in part or whole quite readily explained; their concatenation.

is

be understood in terms of new

to

at least as radical in their time.

The new tempo

not

is

machines— those of a century ago were

Nor

is it

to

be understood

in terms of the

turmoil of hot-and-cold war; man's accustomed ways have survived

many such. It is necessary can go— to assess the causes, upheaval of

Any

which we

life in

to

go deeper— deeper perhaps than

live.

serious consideration of a

the tempo of

human

man

the direction, and the destiny of the great

theme so immense and imprecise

history has to recognize

its

limitations: the

as

weight

assigned to the composite elements of histor\% the nature of change, the

meaning

of

change

as

it is

applied to mankind as a whole and to

man

human

life,

as an individual, the impact of external transformation on

and, therefore, the origin, destiny, and nature of man.

Thus a philosophy

of both man and histor\' are central to the considerawe cannot hope, within the scope of this essay, to develop either. What we can do is briefly re-examine human histor}- to disco\er the

and a psychology

tion,

but

critical

This

point at which the tempo of histor\' changed. point is clearly the second half of the eighteenth century—

critical

the onset of the Industrial Revolution. This was an era of acceleration previously unknowTi; the great divide between the old and the new.

In

many

respects

it

was a

"shift of gears"

111

more spectacular than

that of

An our o\Mi time.

It

above

of toil, and.

men toward the The certainty

Essay on Time

altered the face of the earth, the age-old conditioii all,

common attitude of ordinar>' and human progress.

the

extraordinary

possibility- of

would always be the same gave way, ahnost it would someday be different, and differ-

that life

overnight, to the certaint)' that

ent in the sense of "better." Men may have looked back to the "good old days"— they always have-but they could not help looking forward to the good new days to come. And they looked forward to them with assurance. This assurance itself was the essential element of their psychological stability. It is men's attitude toward life, not their possessions or their deprivations, that

above world"

On

all, is

go\ems the hves they

a time of uncertaint>-. a real possibiht}' in

the other,

man seems

on earth. One hundred, even

On

a sense that

to stand

lead.

Our own time

is,

the one hand, the "end of the it

wasn't a century ago.

on the threshold of the bibHcal heaven

years ago the Life of the world was predominphenomenal growth of the cities. The blessings of industr)' were come, in some small degree, to the most remote household in the advanced countries; but the spirit of Me was what it always had been. Men moved no faster— outside the factories— and the home was the undisputed center of life and death. Mobility for the sake of mobility was as good as unknown; mobility for the sake of opportunity likewise (except on the new American continent). Men felt that it was all right to stay where they were— and what they were. They didn't spurn change, nor were they carried away b\- it unless they were driven from the land to the cities. Those who were restless were many, but they were fifty,

antly rural, in spite of the

still

a small minorit}'; they did not set the tone of the age.

Men may

numbers, whose actual condition by the age of speed. They may go to the supermarket— they as likely as their wives now— iDStead of to the general store. The do-it-yourself and labor-saving devices in the home may have taken the place of the serv^ant girl. But all of these modem wonders together do not necessarily change the pace of Hfe to a critical degree. What does change it is the feeling of the time. It is a feeling of huny. It is a 'feeling of having to hurr\', not because of the speed-up on the assembly line, but because of wanting to hurry. The philosopher is said to be the man who hves every day as if that day would be his last; mid-twentieth-century man may— in this sense, if in no other— be the supreme philosopher. of life

is

be found today, and

in great

unaffected, or only tangentially affected,

Unlike mid-nineteenth-century man, he has the economic freedom which enables him to choose to huny. It is not his family's mere subsistence that compels him. And ( still more imlike mid-nineteenth-century man) he has the leisure in which to hu^y^ The paradox is more than verbal. In an age in which labor tends to be ever more homogeneous,

112

The Tempo ever less rewarding in that gives his

about; ours

is

life its

itself, it is

character.

of History

what a man does with

He may

sit

not a time of sitting quietly.

man had no concern with He did not participate actively

Mid-nineteenth-century little

consciousness of

the local,

his leisure time

quietly or race frantically

or, as

it.

recently as

fifty

"the world," and in politics

beyond

years ago, the domestic scene. His news-

if he had one, was filled with domestic aflFairs. Wars were fought on faraway battlefields by professional armies. Cities and homes were safe. Our American grandfathers— and many of our fathers— neither knew nor needed to know whether Cuba was in the Mediterranean or the Caribbean or what Korea was, or Yugoslavia or Czechoslovakia, much less Iran or Iraq, or Vietnam or Vietminh, or Ghana, Guiana, or New Guinea. They were not bewildered; they may not have understood what they needed to understand, but they thought they did. We know we don't. And as if the earth and all its intricacies were comprehensible, midtwentieth-century man is called upon to take on the cosmos and to abandon his unquestioning awe of the universe for a daily, or hourly, report on the hidden face of the moon, or the surface of Venus, or the hypothesis of life on the planets. Actual government may become daily more remote from him, more the business of experts; but the democratic mythos requires his keeping up. How can he? He shakes his head; he feels old and confused, he who felt, until the atomic bomb hit Hiroshima, that he had a pretty good idea of what things were like. Be he simple or erudite, generalist or specialist, he finds himself saying, with former President Hoover, that he "just doesn't grasp all that." Let us, as we replay the reel of history, stop it for a moment and study the picture of the beginning of the eighteenth century in Europe, and especially in England, just before the great change began. Here, we have said, was the "moment of balance," the "delicate adjustment" which had taken nearly a million years to achieve. Dislocation there had been and still was. But dislocation had not yet carried away the average man's sense of location. Whatever he understood or didn't understand in the way of change— whatever he could or couldn't grasp in detail—he could grasp all of it taken together. The whole was intelligible to him. Looking at everything about him, he felt safe enough on balance to tolerate the unsafety of his changing world without suffer-

paper,

we nowadays

ing what In

its

two

traditional

call tension.

uses— in mechanics and

in politics— tension

means

the tautness caused by stretching and the strain of relations so taut that

they

may

snap.

The notion

transferred to psychology

commonly designates

the emotional pitch, the breaking-point tightness, induced by the stresses

So commonly understood— and presumably felt— are these next to impossible to imagine any product or service sold today without the appeal of relief or relaxation from them. The drug and

of

modern

life.

stresses that

it is

113

An Essay on Time liquor and tobacco business batten on them. Psychotherapy

is

of course

Without them, schools and oflBces and factories would not have their present schedules, and furniture and household appliances, recreation and entertainment facilities, transportation and tourism would all want for an advertising preoccupied with them, and organic medicine,

theme combining dread and relief. Lewis Mumford suggests an analysis "broken time and broken attention":

of

too.

modern tension

in terms of

The difiGculties of transport and communication before 1850 automatically acted as a selective screen, which permitted no more stimuli to reach a person than he could handle: a certain urgency was necessary before one received a call from a long distance or was compelled to a journey oneself: this condition of slow physical locomotion kept intercourse down to a human scale, and under definite control. Nowadays this screen has vanished: the remote is as close as the near: the ephemeral is as emphatic as the durable. While the tempo of the day has been quickened by instantaneous communication the rhythm of the day has been broken: the radio, the telephone, the daily newspaper clamor for attention, and amid the host of stimuli to which people are subjected, it becomes more and more difficult to absorb and cope with any one part of the environment, to say nothing of dealing with it as a whole. The common man is as subject to these interruptions as the

make

man of affairs, and even the weekly period of cessation from familiar tasks and contemplative reverie, which was one of the great contributions of Western religion to the discipline of the personal ^^ life, has become an ever remoter possibility.

scholar or the

The phenomenal

Progress? fifty

rise in

automobile ownership

in the past

years has put about seventy million cars on the roads in a nation

more than 180,000,000 people. New throughways and freeways and are outmoded before they are opened. The result is vehicles with the power of two hundred horses traveling more slowly than one horse. In 1911 a buggy could move through Los Angeles at a rate of

expressways

today, in the rush hours, the average car speed of five miles per hour. And the man behind the wheel? He is a microcosm of the Age of Powerlessness, equipped, like the macrocosm itself, with impotent might. There is no way to use it, nor can he abandon it and get out and walk; he is its of eleven miles per, hour;

makes the same

trip at a

He has to get somewhere— and he even before he gets to work or gets home.

prisoner.

can't.*

His tension mounts-

THE DICHOTOMY OF SPIRIT

There

are," says philosopher Alfred

North Whitehead, "two principles

inherent in the very nature of things, recurring in

embodiments whatever 12 Op.

cit.,

pp.

field

we

explore— the

272-273.

114

spirit of

some

particular

change, and the

The Tempo

of History

TRAFFIC ON A LOS ANGELES FREEWAY In 1911, a buggy could move through Los Angeles at a rate of eleven miles per hour; today, in the rush hours, the average car makes the same trip at a speed of five miles an hour

Spirit of

conservation."" This dichotomy of spirit

is

one of the prevailing

themes of psychology and history. William James finds "an everlasting struggle in every mind between the tendency to keep unchanged, and the tendency to renovate, p. 524a-b).

And

progressive principle

...

ideas" (Principles of Psychology, Vol. 53,

its

in his essay is

On

Liberty, John Stuart Mill writes:

antagonistic to the

sway

of

Custom

"The .

.

.

and the contest between the two constitutes the chief interest of the history of mankind" (Vol. 43, p. 300d). There is, presumably, a center between the two spiritual poles where the "well-adjusted

man" may

find a life without tension,

a

life

with

enough excitement, novelty, opportunity, and freedom to save him from maddening monotony. ("My God, my God!" says Tolstoy's Natasha. "The same faces, the same talk. Papa holding his cup and blowing in the same way!"— War and Peace, Vol. 51, p. 294a.) That this center is, in the cases of difiFerent men, differently located between the two poles is a

just

13 Science and the Modern World (Lowell Lectures, 1925. lan Company, 1950), p. 289.

115

New

York:

The Macmil-

)

An

Essay on Time

we know, some minds in which boldness, predominates: in some, the desire to avoid imperilHng what is already possessed is a stronger sentiment than that which prompts to improve the old and acquire new advantages; while there are others who lean the contrary way, and are more eager for future than careful of present good" (J. S. Mill, Representative Government, Vol. 43, p. 336b). Back to this center between the two poles— wherever his peculiar temperament finds it— the individual gravitates. Let him be pulled sufficiently far off center, so far that he cannot see how to get back, and tension develops. The Cold War that now divides the world may be seen in these same terms as the eternal struggle between submission and freedom, between security and liberty, between order and enterprise— and between the solid conformity of the mass and the self-assertion of the daring matter of

common

observation: "There are,

which caution, and others

in

individual. Seen in these terms, the issues are not political at

psychological. Is there a resolution of the conflict

change within

man

between

all,

but

stability

and

himself? Stating the issue in terms of the restrictions

upon man's aggressive tendencies, Freud finds that "civilized man has exchanged some part of his chances of happiness for a measure of security." Deprived, by necessity, of the primitive outlets for his aggression, civilized man can hardly be happy. There would seem to be, then, no possibility of resolution. "The human love of aggression," as Freud calls it, will assert itself one way or another; for better or for worse, man cannot give up his freedom for "civilization." (See Civilization and Its Discontents, Vol. 54, p. 788a-d. of civilization

ADAPTATION AND ADVENTURE says Darwin, "can long resist conditions

Man,"

which appear

ex-

He

has long lived in the for his canoes or implements,

tremely unfavourable for his existence.

extreme regions of the North, with no wood and with only blubber as fuel, and melted snow as drink. In the southern extremity of America the Fuegians survive without the protection of

any building worthy to be called a hovel. In South wander over arid plains, where dangerous beasts abound. Man can withstand the deadly influence of the Terai at the foot of the Himalaya, and the pestilential shores of tropical Africa." And, he points out, it is the puny bushmen and the dwarfed Eskimos who survive nature's most fearful hardships. (See The Descent of Man, Vol. clothes,

or

of

Africa the aborigines

49, pp. 350c-d, 286c-d.)

man as the supremely adaptable animal, supposed that his mental, or psychological, adaptability is equally phenomenal. "There is hardly any psychic condition," says Erich Fromm, "which he cannot endure, and under which he cannot carry on. He can live free, and as a slave. Rich and in luxury, and under This

and

it

is

the orthodox view of

is

116

The Tempo

He

of History

and peaceably; and loving fellowship." But— "the statement ... is only half true ... if he lives under conditions which are contrar\' to his nature and to the basic requirements for human growth and sanity, he cannot help reacting; he must either deteriorate and perish, or bring about conditions which are more in accordance with his needs. "^^ The physical challenge imposed by the environment— and by physical change— has for all advanced peoples as good as disappeared. Man's over all the earth" is complete. (See Gen. 1:26.) So "dominion tame have the terrors of the pristine wilderness become— the bottom of the sea, the stratosphere— that the stars themselves appear to be the only challenge left him. There have always been men who sought adventures, physical or psychological, beyond those imposed upon them, and if they have always been a small minorit)-, their derring-do has been a vicarious adventure for all their contemporaries; they ha\e appealed to the dream, if not to the calculation, of all men. These few undertake to master the environment. The\' even searchconditions of half-stan'ation. as

can

.

out or create ever)'

.

live as a warrior,

member

an exploiter and robber, and as a

of a co-operating

.

new environments

age and in ever\' area of

They are the frontiersmen of To them and their dri\-e we ascribe

to master. life.

They are those who take the steps in the dark and, by and invention, produce most of the changes that quicken the tempo of histor)'. They are men of extreme disposition, whose "center" is far over on the side of the unkno\\'n and the untried, who thrive on what for most men would be unbearable tension. When Mephistopheles oflFers Faust "peace and quiet," the latter replies scornfully, "If ever I lay me on a bed of sloth in peace, / That instant let for me existence cease!" (Goethe, Faust, Vol. 47, p. 40b). They are the adventurers who, See like Alexander, fear that there may be no more worlds to conquer. Plutarch, Lives, Vol. 14, p. 542c.) Good men and bad, they are the Napoleons of politics and industry, of science and of art. They shake the world and seem to be themselves no worse off for it. But let the ordinary man move into the unkno\\Ti— like the slave set free, the peasant forced into the factory, or the earthling of a few years ago confronted by outer space— and his grip on stability is loosened. The dizzying sense of change in our time may be compared with the sudden removal from solid ground to the edge of a mountain crevasse. The higher one goes, the further one falls. Preindustrial man (except for the monarchs and princes) had not far to fall. The ground on which he stood was emotionally familiar; nor was it just his physical immobilit}-, but also all

progress.

intention

(

his social immobility in the class society, that

may have been low— but he knew 14 The Sane Society

(New

supported him. His place

his place.

York: Rinehart

& Company,

117

Inc.,

1955), pp. 18-19.

An

Essay on Time

THE RESISTANCE TO CHANGE of human beings, the soHd men and women

T

of the he great mass world, cHmb momitains only when they have to and take risks only when they must. Not for them to reach for the stars— or fly to the moon. When they fly, they fly backward, Hke the mythical bird; more concerned to know where they've been, and how to get back, than to go somewhere new. They are the patient ones, the work horses of the world, the heroes of endurance, the "passive resisters" of change. And as hard to stampede as to hurry. Without them the tempo of histoiy would shoot up— and then down— like a comet. History itself would be madness, divine or diabolical.

They

are the custodians of culture, the repository of the slow

accumulated values. Not that they cannot adapt themfrom it. They are hardy, tough; tougher than most mountaineers and astronauts and high-fliers of all kinds. But they are the perpetual testimony to the fact that, in man, adjustment to physical change and to social change are two entirely different things. They— the many of the earth— represent the resistance against which the progressives and the retrogressives rail. The barricades they throw

past and

all its

selves to physical change; far

up against change are overt resistance

of three fairly distinct kinds.

(or even rejection);

and the

One

third,

is

habit; another,

non-inclusion in

Of these three drags on the speed-up of history, the universal dominant is habit, or custom, that "standing hindrance to human advancement" (J. S. Mill, On Liberty, Vol. 43, p. 300d). "When they are once set a-going," said Tristram Shandy, Gent., of men in general, "whether right or wrong, 'tis not a halfpenny matter,— away they go cluttering like hey-go mad; and by treading the same steps over and over again, they presently make a road of it, as plain and as smooth as a garden-walk, which, when they are once used to, the Devil himself sometimes shall not be able to drive them off it" (Laurence Sterne, Tristram Shandy, Vol. 36, p. 191b). The wonder, then, is that man moves at all; not that the tempo of history increases, but that there should be any. So overwhelmed by the wonder of it was the greatest of all students of habit, William James, that he defined genius as "little more than the faculty of perceiving in an unhabitual way" (Principles of Psychology, Vol. 53, p. 524b). James's summary of his analysis of habit is a famous paragraph well worth innovation.

reciting as a

commentary on the tempo

of history:

the enormous fly-wheel of society, its most precious conseris vative agent. It alone is what keeps us all within the bounds of ordinance, and saves the children of fortune from the envious uprisings of the poor. It alone prevents the hardest and most repulsive walks of life from being deserted by those brought up to tread therein. It keeps the

Habit

.

.

.

fisherman and the deck-hand at sea through the winter; it holds the in his darkness, and nails the countryman to his log-cabin and his lonely farm through all the months of snow; it protects us from inva-

miner

118

The Tempo sion

by the

and the frozen zone. It dooms us upon the lines of our nurture or our

natives of the desert

fight out the battle of life

and

of History all to

early

make

the best of a pursuit that disagrees, because there is no other for which we are fitted, and it is too late to begin again. It keeps different social strata from mixing. Already at the age of twentychoice,

to

you see the professional mannerism settling down on the young traveller, on the young doctor, on the young minister, on the young counsellor-at-law. You see the little lines of cleavage running through the character, the tricks of thought, the prejudices, the ways of the "shop," in a word, from which the man can by-and-by no more five

commercial

escape than his coat-sleeve can suddenly fall into a new set of folds. On the whole, it is best he should not escape. It is well for the world that in most of us, by the age of thirty, the character has set like plaster, and wiU never soften again. {Ibid., p. 79b) It may be well for the world but it is hard on those who want to change it. When Nikita Khrushchev visited his birthplace at Kalinovka— which he had transformed into a model agrogorod, or agricultural townhe observed with dismay that the harvesting of hay in the next village was being carried out as it had been a century ago. But one need not go to Russia to see men clinging to the ways of their ancestors. Let the tourist go to the mountain valleys of Switzerland, home of the finest of all precision machines, and he will see men and women living essentially the way they lived five hundred years ago— and training their children to live the same way. In an Alpine village— or cluster of villages— the same few names repeat themselves from house to house and settlement to settlement. The twentieth century may be remembered as the time when a villager put in a bathroom— yes, or a deepfreeze— Z?«f the way of life is untouched. This villager has as much electric power as he can use. He is as rich in this world's goods as he feels he needs to be; in many material ways he is the world's richest man. But he manures and harvests his fields as his ancestors did from time immemorial, stores his potatoes and apples for winter (and never dreams of out-of-season delicacies), and heats his house (which has no bathtub or flush toilet, still less a refrigerator or washing machine) with wood cut, split, trimmed, stacked, bagged, and wheeled by hand. He is a creature of habit— and so far from being a discontented creature, he will like as not ask you, "What for?" when you suggest that once in his life he might want to visit Geneva, Lucerne,

or Zurich.

The

"primitive" people of the island of Tristan de Cunha, after a

year's experience of mid-twentieth-century

England, voted 148 to 5 to go back home. "To prefer a recently active volcanic island to the welfare state, with only remote chances of rescue if the crater erupts again, is a

sharp commentary on modern civilization," said the London Telegraph.

Why did these islanders, who had been isolated for 150 years until they were removed to their "native" England after the volcanic eruption 119

)

.

An of 1961, go

back

Essay on Time

to a life of hunger, poverty,

for their children? "Essentially," the

and complete lack of future

London New Statesman

said, "it is

because they have taken a careful look at orn- way of life and decided that it is totally disagreeable to them. They do not conceal their scorn for the competitive and acquisitive nature of our urban civilization. They hanker, says Mr. Willy Repetto, their leader, for the peace of their traditional community, close to nature, where everybody knows every-

where everything belongs to everybody." Mr. Repetto would not be welcome in Tristan; they would not fit in with the communal life of the islanders and their presence would lead to fights. "I think," the British editorialist concluded, "we might all reflect upon his words. "^° Habit transmitted by our parents, and hardened as we mature, sets up a mighty resistance to the new simply because it is new: "Old-fogyism," says James, "is the inevitable terminus to which life sweeps us on" (Op. cit., p. 524b). The old— and the middle-aged—have tried the old ways and found them true; no wonder their slogan is the tried-and-true. Time makes conservatives of us all. Who knows whether the new-fangled will work— or what its side efiFects will be? A Boston editor once declared that a railroad from Boston to Albany would be "as useless as a railroad to the moon," and automobile riding (even at twenty miles per hour) was once held "undesirable for delicate females who would suflFer undue ner\"Ous excitement and circulatory disturbance." Immunization was at first thought to be poisonous— and so were the first tomatoes for the table.

body and, above

all,

said flatly tliat "outside" settlers

A

recent poll revealed that only ten per cent of the people

regularly

by car had ever considered

per cent wouldn't consider

it

(They were unimpressed by

even

if

statistics

flying,

who

travel

and that seventy-three

were as inexpensive as driving. showing that flying is safer than

it

driving.

to

Sooner or later— in a matter of months, years, or centuries— resistance most changes disappears. The climate of adaptability in a given society

has

much

to

do with the rate of acceptance;

in a society as flexible as

commonplace almost Only a few years ago there were still many Americans who "wouldn't have the thing in the house"; today such homes are few and far betNveen. But deeper and older attitudes, even in a flexible climate, may take decades or centuries to change (racial or religious bigotry, for example )

the American, a novelty Hke television becomes a overnight.

"All

organic

instincts,"

says

Freud,

"are

conservative,

historically

acquired, and are directed towards regression, towards reinstatement of something earlier"

(Beyond the Pleasure

Pulled as hard as he

is

Principle, Vol. 54, p. 652b),

in the direction of ever accelerating change,

15 Fla\ais, "London Diary,'' in

New

Statesman, December

120

7,

1962, p. 821.

we

There

a whole gamut of escapes, from the trivial (like candlelight dining) the tcay to neurotic illness and the ultimate refuge of psychosis

is

all

may suppose

modem

that

man's instincts must be pulling him harder

than ever toward regression.

And

there

is

considerable

evidence to

support the supposition. The spreading fashion of the old-fashioned seems to reflect a

compulsion

comforting

(if less

mother say

if

to recover at least the

comfortable)

mode

of

appearance of an older, more

life.

What would

great-grand-

she entered an elegant restaurant in 1963 and saw, as she

well might, the guests eating by candlelight?

Consider the significance of the candlehght within— in the age of neon without.

What

is

our mid-t%ventieth-centur\-

a world he wasn't prepared for,

he

is

for,

tr\^ing to construct

man up

to?

Launched

into

and, indeed, couldn't have been prepared

within that world a

little

\\orld of his

o\^'n;

not reconstruct, but construct, for his past had no candlelight in

it.

what now appears

He to have been the uncomplicated serenit}' of his youth or childhood; he wants to go further back still, to a past neither he nor his parents knew. Does someisn't satisfied

thing

tell

merely

to return to

him, subconsciously, that his real past was part of the turbulent

present; that he has to go

much

further back to recapture the

dream

of simplicity'?

modem

civilization, Freud sees man oppressed by measure of independence from it. There is a whole gamut of escapes, from the tri\-ial (like candlelight dining") all the way to neurotic illness and the ultimate refuge of psychosis: 'The hermit

In his analysis of

realit\'

and

as craving a

121

An

Essay on Time

turns his back on this world; he will have nothing to do with

it.

But

one can do more than that; one can try to re-create it, try to build up another instead, from which the most unbearable features are eliminated and replaced by others corresponding to one's own wishes" ( Civilization

and

Its Discontents, Vol. 54, p.

The

774c).

from reality" is timeless; but in times past, this flight was sought only by the few upon whose consciousness the tempo of history impinged. Only the very few were allotted the excess of reality given the many today. Tolstoy's Count Pierre, for example, was at the center of

"flight

mad

reality in early nineteenth-century Russia.

He

tried to

drown

his

sorrows in the time-tested way: after emptying a bottle or two did he feel dimly that the terribly tangled skein of life which previously had terrified him was not as He said to himself: "It doesn't matter. dreadful as he had thought. rU get it unraveled. I have a solution ready, but have no time now— I'll think it all out later on!" But the later on never came .... Sometimes he remembered how he had heard that soldiers in war when entrenched under the enemy's fire, if they have nothing to do, try hard to find some occupation the more easily to bear the danger. To Pierre all men seemed like those soldiers, seeking refuge from life: some in ambition, some in cards, some in framing laws, some in women, some in toys, some in horses, some in politics, some in sport, some in wine, and some in governmental affairs. "Nothing is trivial, and nothing is important, it's all the same— only to save oneself from it as best one can," thought Pierre, "Only not to see it, that dreadful it\" (War and Peace, Vol. 51, p. 305a-b.)

Only

.

.

.

men turn and run, one way or another, from situations that are much for them, be those situations personal or social, or, as is so often

All

too

the case, a combination of the two.

mon

cause of death

the United States.

some aspect

this delusion

suicide

is

the fourth most com-

just

"behaves in some respect for

Today

behind cancer ) among white males age 25-45 in But short of suicide, each one of us, says Freud,

(

of the

like the paranoiac, substituting a wish-fulfilment

world which

is

through into reality" (Op.

unbearable to him, and carrying cit..

Vol. 54, p. 774c).

THE COLD WAR AND THE ACCELERATION OF CHANGE s

I

the "unprogressive" Swiss villager a fool to cling purposely to the so many centuries ago? If he is shutmay be that he is only doing what his contemporary finds himself compelled to do— and less at that. He could live differently; with little effort at all

small bit of reality allotted to

ting his eyes to social change,

sophisticated traumatically,

him

it

he could throw himself

into the spirit of change and modernize his ways. Habit is not unbreakable. Resistance can be overcome— by temptation or even a common-sense view of labor-saving. The western European peasant does have access to the advantages of twentieth- century life.

122

The Tempo

of History

But most of the people of the earth do not have access to these advantages. The real obstacle to social change, the great drag on the tempo of simply non-inclusion. In spite of the miraculous spread of technology, more than two-thirds of the people of the earth are still

history,

is

unaware, or only faintly aware, of what is going on in the advanced societies. Nigerian nomads have not changed their manner of life in thousands of years. Only a small fraction of the Congolese are even

aware that the Congo is a nation, and life below the Sahara, and in of the Middle and Far East, still involves chattel slavery, sorcery, witchcraft, and ritual killing among almost wholly illiterate peoples who have not yet heard of the steam engine. Until history catches up with these millions of primitive men, the progress of social change will still be measured in ancient terms of slow centuries except in the one-third of the world where it races into the future. But it will catch up with them, not as it did with the Europeans over many centuries, but in a matter of decades or even years. It is catching up with them now, and always faster, in China and India. Westerners

much

who

think that the forced modernization of

democratic

efforts— will

require

Communist China— or

centuries

Japan was transformed from medievalism the domination of Asia ) in a handful of

should

India's

be reminded

that

Western industrialism and years at the end of the nineteenth to

(

century.

Each day three

or four

scheduled

air

transports

wing

their

way

come Here, where the Emir

across the Uzbekistan Desert and, jolting over the grass runway,

Bokhara in Soviet Asia. still had his harem of four hundred women a few decades ago, the whiterobed old Muslims painstakingly broil their spitted shashlik over a tiny flame outside the airport building, and their camels graze at the edge of the flying strip. In the town, the older women remove their veils only inside their clay-and-mud homes whose windows all open on the courtyard. Neither Muslim nor camel nor veiled woman looks up at the great passenger planes any more; they have become commonplace. At the edge of the storied old city, the "new Bokhara" is rising, with great skyscraping apartment buildings. And in the steaming market place the visitor who asks for a Bokhara rug or a caracul hat is told that he ought to be able to get them in Moscow; the manufacture of these agelessly traditional articles is now a Soviet state monopoly. So it is in much of the world that, ten years ago, or even five, change had not yet reached. Here the tempo of history is stepped up faster than it has ever been, or ever could be anywhere else in any age. Here the transformation is not from the machine age to the space age, but from something like the prehistoric to the future. The two centuries of the Industrial Revolution come all at once to one underdeveloped society after another. Whole eras of advance in science and technology are to a halt at the oasis of

123

An skipped as a

mud

Essay on Time

no place that

is

The

man

far areas of the earth since in a trice; there

from the wooden which enveloped these reached them has disappeared

village proceeds almost overnight

plough to the automated factory.

first

isolation

civilized

man

cannot

now

reach in a

matter of hours. People who never heard of Caesar, Napoleon, or Hitler, heard of the death of Marilyn Monroe a few minutes after it occurred. In fifteen years television spread from four countries to sixty-five. Even if there were in the 1960's no special compulsion, it seems

change would continue, that advances no other reason than that things that would come faster and faster, faster. Certainly there is no reason going are going faster tend to keep on supposing that the adventurous for why they should not, and every reason certain that the acceleration of if

for

man

under no imaginable circumstances collapse in the face of resistance or resignation. But there is a special compulsion which, in any foreseeable future, guarantees that the tempo of history ( and with it the pace of individual life ) will proceed at an ever-increasing rate. That special compulsion is the Cold War. There has never before been anything like it in all history: two power blocs with inexhaustible resources and talents dedicated to technological acceleration, not only in their rivalry for power, but also in their effort to outbid each other for the favor of precisely those backward areas of the earth that are moving forward the fastest. To this rivalry, as the two systems try to outdo each other in production and distribution,

mood which

everything

has seized hold of

else,

will

every domestic need, in the nature of the case, has got

be sacrificed and is sacrificed. It may not be too much to say that the Communists allow no consideration of any kind to interfere with the single objective of expediting change; and the "open society" which opposes them, whatever else it might want to do, is compelled to keep

to

up with them and,

if

possible, pass them.

For thousands of years, Asia, Africa, and Latin America lay undisturbed, in some cases (as in China) with a highly developed non-technical culture.

Then

for three or four centuries after the invention of the

and the rudder, colonial

their

exploitation— with

Beyond the

compass by

shores and coastal towns were penetrated a

slave plantations

token importation of modern where the intrepid man-hunters

blessings.

Europe beyond was worth nothing, the European of

corralled the "black ivory," nothing touched the jungles of Africa;

the cities of India and China, where

life

never ventured except on voyages of discovery or research. The world's non-Caucasians were born, lived a few years ( or a few months ) and died ,

without making more than an inadvertent impact on social change. Suddenly they have become the focus of the war for the world. East

and West vie with each other to lend or give them everything they need and want. Nothing is too good for our friends— or our prospective friends. Foreign aid— a concept only a few years ago confined to the church 124

The Tempo

of History

movement—pours

forth from both sides in bilHons of dollars two power blocs has to match the other. And those beneficiaries are regarded as the best investment whose studied neutrality brings the two rivals to their doors in a constant stream. But the Euro-American's advancement was hard and slowly won, and his industrialization went hand in hand with his political development. This may not prove to be the case in the newly developing countries: "In the rising new countries economic efficiency may at least temporarily run far ahead of progress towards social maturity and stability. Much of the stimulus for the educational advancement of the Western nations came from economic necessity. Automatization may weaken that powerful connection. It remains to be seen whether the backward countries will find a driving force to help them develop the social, cultural and political advances necessary to help them cope with the new economic

missionary (

and rubles ) Each .

emancipation."^*^

government

The

literacy

of the

In the primary

areas

of

"rising

expectations,"

Western (even in the Communist) sense rate is as low as two per cent in some countries

in the

is (

self-

unknown. the former

French colony of Niger). Fifteen Asian nations agreed at the Karachi Conference of 1960 that they would try to initiate compulsory public education by 1980; but by 1980 they will have been sovereign nations for a long time, and long since dominant in the General Assembly of the United Nations. And these new nations move onto the stage of history as nation-states at a most paradoxical time, when the nation-state appears to have passed its zenith and stands face to face with the demands of supranational sovereignty.

As the American and Soviet blocs step up their fierce competition for friends, the underdeveloped areas will move not from the past to the present, but from the past to the future. They will be the astonished recipients, not of outmoded guns and gadgets and machinery, but of all the newest innovations from the two competing systems. People who have lived for centuries with no artificial lighting will find themselves enjoying electricity generated by atomic energy.

WHAT

LIES

AHEAD?

immediate future of and technological change The gering. At the of basic research, the breaking of the genetic code scientific

is

stag-

level

looms on the horizon. Deciphered recently for one species of bacteria-

study— it promises to be "a monument of be compared with the discovery of universal evolution by natural selection."^^ It may determine the

after a century of biological

the

human

intellect to

gravitation or of

16 Wassily Leontief,

"Man and

Machines,"

in

Scientific

American,

September,

1952, p. 160. 17 Nigel Calder, "The Genetic Code Explained," in New Scientist, London, January 4, 1962, p. 32. See The Great Ideas Today 1962, pp. 198-204, 294-302.

125

An

Essay on Time

basis of thought, unlock the secrets of incurable diseases like cancer,

provide control of the inheritance of plants, animals, and even of man, and, not impossibly, result in the chemical creation of life. The use of new instruments and precision techniques to isolate substances previously beyond man's reach is revolutionizing medicine at

But the most spectacular changes in man's happy— and profitableunion of technology and commerce. Here is one breathless prediction of the character of life in the United States in 1975: "More Americans (230 million) will have more money (average national family income up from the present $5,000 to $7,500) and more every time to spend it (15% fewer work-hours, 50% more holidays) American's life [will be] safer and easier .... Electronic devices will cook his food faster, purify his air supply, diagnose the weather and also his health. If something goes terribly wrong with his insides, tiny, complex self-powered spare human parts — hearts, kidneys and livers — will be available .... On long hauls electronic guides will keep his car on the giant moving sidewalks will help him glide around town road jet airliners shuttling across the world at 1,500 mph .... Along with regular commuter helicopters, the family helicopter will be as attainable as a fancy convertible is today. With 45% more young people and 25% schools will be running on night and day schedules more old people ." and spare-time pursuits will boom astronomically. Those prophecies, published in Life in 1959,^^ are already dated by the "astronomical boom" which between 1967 and 1970 will put man on the moon: "Throughout his existence, man has been confined to his little planet by massive restraints of gravity and a space environment ruthlessly hostile to life. ... In overcoming these restraints and reaching the moon, man will have set foot for the first time on a celestial body other than the one on which he was born. He will have made the first in a succession of leaps that will end no one knows where."^^ To say, in 1963, that man's future is uncertain would be a model of understatement. The only possible reading of the social barometer is: Change— and always more of it. "The great ages," says Whitehead in Science and the Modern World, "have been unstable ages." No age has known such instability— so deep and so broad— as our own. Nor is it to be denied, in terms of human history, that our age is in many respects one of the greatest. Its very greatness lies in its tempo. It is preeminently the Age of Change, and the further knowledge penetrates the unknown, the more unknowable is the future. The arts of prediction have been refined, mechanized, automated, not merely in the physical, but also an unprecedented

rate.

living conditions will occur as a result of the

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

18 December 28, 1959. 19 Richard Witkin, The

New

.

.

York Times, July 30, 1962.

126

.

.

.

.

The Tempo in the social, sciences;

of History

but apart from the rosy portrait of the leisure

of the future, with a button to press all the buttons for him,

man

and

his

chemical foods and drugs extending his lifetime to a century and longer, prediction is dumb. Few prognosticators believe that the world of 1983— not to say 2083— will bear a close resemblance to the world today.

What

it

will resemble,

and how man

will live in

it,

we

live in

lies

behind

an impenetrable cloud. There seems httle doubt that mankind is poised on the threshold of heaven or hell. The barriers, of distance, of sound, and of outer space, are broken. There is no turning back; the "point of no return" has long since been passed. The problem-solving animal has solved a thousand problems and will solve a thousand-and-one. But the clouded future casts a shadow on him and on all his present and prospective conquests. In 1863 an inventory of basic social problems numbered twenty-two, beginning, alphabetically, with Abolition and ending with Slavery. Fifty years

later

they numbered tvventy-six,

be-

ginning with Administration of Public Institu-

Dependent and ending with Urban Problems. Today they number ninety, beginning with Accidents and ending with War.-" As man's technical triumphs multiply, his moral and poHtical problems— ond even his technical problems—seem to multiply. He is tions for the

many of the effects his Hand in hand with his new afflictions appear and

defenseless against

genius has produced.

"wonder drugs," old ones Hke syphilis reappear.-^ His pesticides protect his fruits, but carry poisons into his system. His offshore waters coat the \vings

of migratory birds with waste oil and kill them by the millions. His modem cities are becoming unbroken strips of unmanageable megalopolises marked by private opulence and pubhc squalor. His high-speed traffic is fatal,

and

his

low-speed

traffic fills his

DYING DUCKS IN

LOWER NEW YORK BAY

Offshore waters coat the wings of migratory birds with waste oil and kill them by the millions

lungs

with noxious fumes. Here he starves, there he is glutted with surplus crops which strangle his agriculture. His improved medicine and sanitation are increasing population faster than he can feed it. 20 Phelps and Henderson, Contemporary Social Problems (New York: Prentice-Hall, 1953), pp. 5-7. 21 The World Health Organization warned recently that "there had been a significant worldwide resurgence of syphilis .... The greatest rise occurred in Europe and the Western Hemisphere, the areas where the disease had ap." {New York Times, parently been brought under the greatest control. .

September 28, 1962),

p. 14.

127

.

An

Essay on Time

long-term observers of change— certainly most social scientistsThey emphasize the discrepancy between

Many

are unabashedly pessimistic.

the pace of technological advance and social advance. As Devereux Josephs, former board chairman of the New York Life Insurance

Company, put it, "Behind the good lurks a gloomy threat— the threat

things that our future holds there

increasing

of

divergence between

man's technical ingenuity and his capacity to master the social and personal problems this ingenuity creates."-- And the late President A. Whitney Griswold of Yale University warned that if man is to continue

upon the earth

to dwell

successfully

—

"more successfully than other — he must have

animals and civilizations that have become extinct"

the kind of education "that develops to their fullest potential the intellectual,

The this

moral, and esthetic powers of the individual."-^ "father" of our

age, Albert

Einstein,

once asked,

"Why

does

magnificent applied science, which saves work and makes hfe easier,

bring us so

little

happiness? The simple answer runs: Because

not yet learned to

make

a complicated question:

sensible use of

How

are

The prophet Jeremiah

we

it."

we have

But the simple answer

to learn? This

raises

the perennial

is

"They are wise to do evil, but to do good they have no knowledge" (Jer. 4:22); and Goethe's Faust declared that "What man knows not is needed most by man, / And what man knows, for that no use has he" (Faust, Vol. 47, p. question.

said of his people,

26b).

A

far cry,

hold of

man

this,

from the dream of perpetual progress that seized Revolution and carried him

at the outset of the Industrial

upward and onward

until the outbreak of

World War

I.

In 1915 the

Hobhouse, observed that the world had turned out to be "a different world from that which we knew, a world in which force had a greater part to play than we had allowed, a world in which the ultimate securities were gone, in which we seemed to see of a sudden through a thin crust of civilization the seething forces of barbaric lust for power and indifference to life."-* Forty years latergreat British liberal, L. T.

saw war in the JuHan Huxley wrote the epitaph forty years that

streets of every capital of

for the

Age

Europe— Sir

of Progress:

In spite of pessimists and disheartened idealists, the unconscious assumption widely prevailed that, however disreputably animal man's origin might have been, the process of evolution had now culminated in nineteenth-centurv civilization, with its scientific discoveries and its technical achievements. All that was now needed to put humanity on the very pinnacle of progress was a little more science, a little more rational enlightenment, and a little more universal education. 22 Life, December 28, 1959, p. 172. 23 Ibid. 24 World in Conflict (London: Unwin, 1915),

128

p. 6.

The Tempo

We

of History

the disillusionment that has set in within the brief space vears. How the orderly mechanisms of nineteen thcenturv^ physics gave way to strange and sometimes non-rational concepts that no one but mathematicians could grasp; how the idea of relaall

know

hundred

of half a

tivity,

and

its

somewhat

illegitimate extension to

human

aflFairs,

destroyed

whether absolute truth or absolute morality or absolute beaut)'; how our belief in the essential rationality and goodness of man was undermined by psycholog)' and sent crashing in ruins by the organized cruelt\^ of Belsen and thie mass folly of two world wars; and how our idealistic notions of progress as the inevitable result of science and education were shattered by events. In brief, man's first evolutional)' picture of nature and his owti place in it proved false in -= its design and had to be scrapped. faith in the

The

absolute,

crust of civilization

is

thin,

a cataclysmic future. But there in the trifling

span of

five

is

and through

thousand years or

originated on the earth t\vo billion years ago,

Man

has

moved

it

we may perhaps which man has

a crust, a crust

fast— and far— to an

so.

is

thought to have

life

about a million.

Life

human

discern

created

ever-higher ideal of

human

life

and

human

society and to the implementation of that ideal (with failures and setbacks, true enough) in the practical order. Social change, though it has depended upon technology to provide the necessary minimum conditions of his advancement, has been more than technological change. It has been cultural and in many ways moral. Man has created higher and higher political and social forms, and social justice as the

foundation of the state has brought, first, freedom, then leisure, safety, health and comfort, and then education and the arts to the many. Opti-

mism may be

rare these days

among

serious

men, but Kant's vision of "a

sovereignty in which reason alone shall have sway" (Critique of Judge-

ment, Vol. 42, p. 587a)

"We grow is

not so easy to grow

effort.

not yet to be foreclosed.

to five feet pretty readily," said Samuel Johnson, "but

Vol. 44, p. 401a).

some

is

Man

And he

is

has grown to

growing

man

is

six

as fast as

reasserts itself: Is there a limit to

be broken and which

it

to seven" (James Boswell, Life of Samuel Johnson,

feet— perhaps a bit

he can. But

human power,

approaching

at

now

more— wdth

an ancient issue

a barrier

which cannot

an ever increasing rate of

speed? The train of troubles which the rate of change has brought forward has already been adverted to. Portentous may be the fact that the most highly advanced nations have the highest suicide, homicide, and alcoholism rates in the world— the United States, Switzerland, Sweden, and Denmark, with Finland, France, and England close behind. Still more portentous is the fact that the countries most wholeheartedly

devoted to "the mastery of natiu-e" stand closest to the brink of a war of universal annihilation.

25 Op.

cit.,

p.

42.

129

An It is

Essay on Time

eighteen years since Hiroshima;

how many men

are able

and

to grasp the fact of atomic power, to identify themselves

with sion

it? Is this

which

simply a cultural too large for us?

is

lag, or are

Have we

we up

against a

bitten off

somehow their Hves

new dimenwe can we can be-

more than

Are we heU-bent to be more than at least in such a hurry? So far and no further— this is what Adam was told. But he and his sons have gone further in the hope that they might (as the serpent said) "be as gods." And, says Freud, they have in our

chew— at

least so fast?

time nearly become as gods; but they aren't happy with their likeness. Its Discontents, Vol. 54, pp. 778d-779a. ) Why not? our age of unprecedented change the age also of unprecedented

(See Civilization and

Why fear

is

and

insecurit\-?

Man's most

flattering

myth

is

that of Prometheus,

who

stole the secrets

and gave them to the sons of men. But aeons later, great Jove saw man with his fire and his iron, his armor and his chariots, and muttered to himself, "Of all creatures that Live and move upon the earth there is none so pitiable as he is" ( Homer, The Iliad, Vol. 4, p. 126c V The power to know the future was, of all the gifts of the gods, beginning with

fire,

of Prometheus, the one the gods resented most; but says,

"Man

has

lost

now

Albert Schweitzer

the capacity to foresee and to forestall.

He

will

end by

destroying the earth."

The

astronaut was Icarus, who, wearing wings fashioned of and fastened with wax to his body, flew so near the sun that the wax melted and he fell into the sea. Does this ancient myth tell us something as we reach for the stars? Does the strange and wonderful stor>' of Eden tell us the same thing? Forbidden the knowledge of good and evil, are we o\erreaching ourseh-es as we race for%vard e\er faster on the wings of the knowledge of lesser things? first

feathers

130

NOTE TO THE READER An

essay on a theme as comprehensive

tempo

iTx. as the

of history

must neces-

sarily

range over a wide variety of sub-

jects,

including the patterns of history, the

essay to the Syntopicon chapter on Progress.

Economic

progress, including the in-

crease of wealth, the improvement in the status

and conditions of

labor,

and the

idea of progress, the impact of technology

progressive conquest of nature through

on human

ence and invention, is discussed in the passages cited under Progress Sa-Sc. Skeptical or pessimistic denials of progress can be found under Progress Ic. The effects of science and technology

life,

growth of knowledge, and hu-

dition, the

man

the role of custom and tra-

resistance to change.

Each of these

subjects can be discussed only briefly with-

The reader who

in the essay.

is

interested

any of these subjects will find an abundance of valuable material in the Syntopicon and in Great Books of the Western World. The laws and patterns of historical change are discussed in the passages in Great Books of the Western World cited in the Syntopicon chapter on History under in investigating further

topic 4h.

The

role of the

and Physics

The

Change

summarized

12b.

Intellectual

tory 4a(2) and 4a(4). is

part played

Progress 5. Related passages on the love and hatred of change can be found under

and geographic),

scribed in the passages listed under His-

cations

5.

by custom and tradimodifying and hindering change is discussed under Custom and Convention 8, while factors operating against social progress, such as emotional opposition to change or novelty, are described under

pre-eminent individual—

of progress in

are described in the pas-

tion in

the great man, hero, or leader— are de-

The idea

life

sages listed under Science lb (I) -lb (2)

role of material forces in his-

tory (economic, physical,

and the

on human

and

cultural progress, includ-

ing progress in the all

of

its

sci-

the sciences,

ramifi-

is

and Knowledge

in the introductory

131

arts,

philosophy, and

discussed in Progress 6-6b 10.

PART THREE

The Year's Developments in the

Arts and Sciences Literature, Saul Bellow

Biological Sciences and Medicine, Leonard Engel and Kenneth Brodney

Philosophy and Religion, John Physical Sciences

Herman

Randall,

Jr.

and Technology, Edward U. Condon

Social Sciences

and Law, Reuel Denney

SAUL BELLOW,

one of the most important American writers of the

generation following Faulkner and in 1915. In 1924,

he moved with

Hemingway, was born his family to Chicago,

in

Quebec, Canada,

where he studied

at

the University of Chicago and Northwestern University, graduating with a

degree in anthropology in 1937. While in graduate school at the University of Wisconsin, he decided to become a writer. His

first novel. Dangling Man, apby The Victim in 1947. His third novel, The Advenof Augie March, won the National Book Award for "the most distinguished

peared tures

work

in 1944, followed

of fiction published in 1953." Since then,

of stories. Seize the

Day (1956), and

he has published a collection

another novel, Henderson the Rain King

(1959). In addition, he has served as one of the editors of the literary periodical

The Noble Savage. Twice the

recipient of

Guggenheim

fellowships,

and

a winner of a National Institute of Arts and Letters award, he has taught at several universities, including Minnesota, Yale, Princeton,

cently he

was honored with

University.

a Doctor of Literature degree

and Chicago. Refrom Northwestern

LITERATURE SAUL BELLOW individual peculiarly modern form The ture with Montaigne, to take an arbitrary in his

first

appears in

litera-

Montaigne in his Essays presents himself as quite a plain and ordinary man, but one in whom everything essential may be seen.^ Shunning extremes, he concentrates upon the average. This, however, he investigates in depth and, fixing his attention on matters entirely human, he emerges with a new conception of the scope and meaning of a personal existence. Man lives on this earth, his life is fragile, his time is short; still, he enjoys many remarkable powers, and he may acquire a profound skeptical wisdom. The essays of Montaigne are a personal document, parts of an extensive confession which, unlike the Confessions of St. Augustine (see Vol. 18, pp. la-125c), does not have a spiritual character. For Montaigne the human condition is secular. The facts, all of the facts, though many of them are sure to be trifling, belong in his description of the human creature. The whole sum of the facts is necessary. Mixed though they be, they do not prevent the individual from attaining his own sort of human grandeur. Thus Montaigne is able to pass with ease from kitchen matters to metaphysics. This mixture of things high and low is peculiarly modem. Romantic individualism two centuries later, in Rousseau, proclaims the uniqueness of the Self and, much more aggressively and ambitiously than in Montaigne, contrasts the individual and the surrounding world. Nineteenth-century romanticism celebrates the individual, his natural and intuitive qualities, and sees in civilization his great enemy. It awaits a new and broader freedom and prefers human life to have an aesthetic starting point.

character.

In the

But these brave expectations have,

modern world (and romanticism

excited sense of the exceptional

is

is

a

in fact, a very brief career.

modern phenomenon), the

required to bear the experience of the

commonplace. An industrialized mass society cannot accommodate any sizable population of Prometheans and geniuses. The century of Shelley's Prometheus is also that of Emile Zola's near-primate peasants and proletarians. The large claims made for the Self in the early period of romanticism begin to sound foolish in the modem age of large populations. To men of acute intelligence, by the second half of the nineteenth century, romantic individualism began to appear fraudulent. Dostoevsky shows 1

"I desire ... to be viewed as I appear in mine own genuine, simple, and ordinary manner, without study and artifice: for it is myself I paint" (Vol. 25, p. la).

135

"

Literature (in the figure of Miiisov in

easy

it is

The Brothers Karamazov,

for instance)

how

for comfortable, indolent people, thoroughly bourgeois in spirit,

to think of themselves as romantic idealists. (See Vol. 52, pp. 15a-45d

As romantic

passim. )

feeling

becomes vulgarized and debased,

literature

begins to treat the romantic hero with sharp hostility.

Early realism, in the novels of Balzac, makes

Though

much

of the individual.

examines life in a contemporary and ordinary setting, the Balzacian novel grants full dignity to people from the lower ranks of society. Romanticism in the last years of the eighteenth century began to see it

humble life. The ploughboy, the cotter, the simple charmed Burns and Wordsworth. Far less attractive, how-

great virtue in the

country ever,

girl

was the ordinary

civilized

urban

man who appeared

in the realistic

Examined with great and even tragic seriousness by Balzac, he proved to be a creature of deep and distorted passions. Old Goriot, Grandet, Vautrin— the monomaniac father, the genius novels of the nineteenth century.

of avarice, the inspired criminal— are great figures taken

That common

life is, in

from common

eighteenth-century novels like

Tom

Jones,

life. still

the material of comedy. Serious realism belongs to the nineteenth century.

soon appears that the degradation of the

It

nineteenth-century writers than

its

common

life is

plainer to

heroic possibilities. Hawthorne, in

Custom House," with gentle but bitter irony why he was obliged to write a romance. draws a deadly picture of the customs house at Salem, its sluggish-

a prefatory chapter to The Scarlet Letter called "The tells

He

ness and dullness, and of the old men, originally slow-witted or decaying,

the staflF. This to him is modem Salem. The "dim and dusky grandeur" of the old town and its colonists who came with sword and Bible, the pious but fierce Puritans who persecuted Quakers and burned

who make up

this modern dreariness. The writer must to his magnificent ancestors to be shamefully insignificant. " 'What

witches— all of that has ended in

seem is

he?'

murmurs one grey shadow

of story-books!

What

of

my

forefathers to the other. 'A writer

kind of business in life— what

God, or being serviceable to mankind

in his

mode

of glorifying

day and generation— may

that be?'

In an effort to save himself— mind and spirit threatened by the torpor and emptiness of the customs house— Hawthorne writes his romance.

was a folly, with the materiality of this daily life pressing so inupon me, to attempt to fling myself back into another age, or to insist on creating the semblance of a world out of airy matter, when, at eveiy moment, the impalpable beauty of my soap-bubble was broken by the rude contact of some actual circumstance. The wiser effort would have been to diffuse thought and imagination through the opaque substance of today, and thus to make it a bright transparency; to spiritualize the burden that began to weigh so heavily; to seek, resolutely, the tme and indestructible value that lay hidden in the petty and wearisome incidents, and ordinary characters with which I It

trusively

136

Saul Bellow

was now conversant. The fault was mine. The page of life that was spread out before me seemed dull and commonplace onlv because I had not fathomed its deeper import. A better book than I shall ever write was there.

We he

cannot be sure that Hawthorne was completely in earnest, since

He is not alone, however, in with ordinar}- life or with the writer's incapacitv' to deal with it. "Nothing conceivable is so pett\". so insipid, so crowded with paltr}- interests, in one word so anti-poetic, as the life of a man in the United States," wrote De Tocqueville in 1S40. He added, "But among the in effect apologizing for a masterpiece.

is

his dissatisfaction

thoughts which

and that

is

it

suggests there

alwa\-s one

is

which

is

full of poetn.-,

the hidden ner\'e which gives vigor to the frame."

Novelists of the nineteenth centur\". nourished on romantic individu-

cope with the results of industrial

alism, find that they are obliged to

life, becomes possible same time the indi\idual, oppressed by the weight

collectivism. Cultivated inwardness, a rich private

for a fairly large

number

the single, separate of numbers,

valueless

of people.

self, feels

But

severely limited,

by nature, by the conditions

by the lack

at the

of life— his distinction

rendered

of true power. In e\er)^ direction the romantic in-

di\idual sees injustice, the threat of debiht\-, sickness, senselessness, and

The

ruin.

t>"pical

hero of the later nineteenth-centux\' novel has been

by Christian idealism in Thomas Hardy ) is spoiled by the arrangements of civilized societ\- (in Tolstoy), decides not to get out of bed (in Goncharov^i. lives under elaborate restraints (Henry James). Emma Bovar\-. the heroine of Flaubert's great novel,

robbed of

his

\-italit\-

(

,

or destroyed

an altogether insignificant person who belongs to the pett\' bourgeoisie But Madame Bovary is something more than the record of a wTetched life. It is a ver\' special sort of aesthetic creation, immense-

is

of the provinces.

ly influential,

and

which

gi\-es to

the performance of the

discipline, his reading of fate,

ly to the subject of the novel. itself

makes up

for lack of

pettiness of the hero

nificance of this art

is

That

mind

to say that in

is

Madame Bovary

or heart in the characters of fiction.

granted. It

is \"er\-

artist, his \'irtuosity

an importance which belonged former-

great.

is

the art that

The

is

art

The

exalted, but the sig-

aim of the Flaubertian novelist

is

to immerse himself in his subject, self -forgetfully. Flaubert, says Erich

Auerbach

in

one of

his

superb

critical studies in Mimes^is, "believes that

phenomenal world is also re\"ealed in Hnguistic expresThat world is, however, in the novelist's view, an incredibh- complicated and frightful thing. It is in reaHt\- a multitude of private worlds without connection, explains Auerbach, where "each is alone, none can imderstand another, or help another to insight; there is no common world of men, because it could only come into existence if mam- should find their way to their on^ti proper reality-, the realit>' which is gi\-en to the individual— which then \\ould be also the true common reality." the truth of the sion."

137

,

Literature

Individualism thus finds sanctuary in the briefly, for

the older sort of romantic individualism fiercely. Eliot)

attack

it

Cocktail Party,

but only very

artist himself,

twentieth-century literature does not tolerate as strongly as the Marxists

Edward Chamberlayne cannot

The

this.

It assails

Christians (T.

believe in his

own

S.

The

(Bertolt Brecht). In

person-

The Measures Taken, a zealous young Communist organizer is liquidated by his comrades because he is an individual, hence dangerous to the party. From still another point of view, a writer like D. H. Lawrence declares the nullity of civilized personalities. He finds, ahty; in Brecht's

for instance, in his essay

Literature) that in his

on Melville (in Studies in Classic American self" Melville is "almost dead. That is,

"human

he hardly reacts to human contacts any more: or only ideally: or just for a moment. His human-emotional self is almost played out. He is abstract, self-analytical and abstracted. And he is more spellbound by the strange slidings and collidings of Matter than by the things men do." Melville's is an "isolated, far-driven soul, the soul which is now alone, without any real human contact." Ordinary and conventional conceptions of the self are to Lawrence "painted millstones." He thought that we were witnessing the ghastly end of a false "social" and slavish selfhood. Enduring the horror of this death, we may expect to be reborn. This, as modem attitudes go, is comparatively optimistic. Lawrence expects rebirth and regeneration, a new and greater victory for the instincts, to occur. A statement made in the early 1920's by Hugo von Hofmannsthal, the Viennese poet, frequently quoted by critics, expresses a far more nihilistic attitude:

Our time is unredeemed; and do you know what it wants to be redeemed from? .... The individual. Our age groans too heavily .

.

.

under the weight of this child of the sixteenth century that the nineteenth fed to monstrous size. We are anonymous forces. Potentialities of the soul. Individuality is an arabesque we have discarded. I should go so far as to assert that all the ominous events we have been witnessing in the last twelve years are nothing but a very awkward and longwinded way of burying the concept of the European individual in .

.

.

.

the grave

Such a

it

has

dug

for itself.

.

,

.

position, as the critic Lionel

nal book Metatheatre, must

.

Abel points out

make "moral

in his highly origi-

and morality Symbohst poet Arthur Rimbaud, a "weakness of the brain," for if man is an "anonymous force," then morality may be one of the historical costumes it has pleased him to wear during several millennia. For moral ideas, whose focus is the individual, the present itself,

in the

tendency

is

words

sufiFering absurd,"

of the

to substitute ideas of class, nation, or breed. In the political

Many ought to be guided by the gifted One or Few. "The initiation of all wise or noble things comes and must come from individuals; generally at first from some sphere, classical liberalism holds that the sovereign

138

Saul Bellow

.

one individual," said

J. S.

On

Mill in

Liberty (Vol. 43, p. 298d).

The po-

significance of the anti-individualism of occidental literature in the

litical

twentieth century

is,

however, far from

clear.

celebrated in the literature of a democracy, as the

One grew

insignificant.

Modern

De

The Many would be Tocqueville prophesied,

literature has not fulfilled this

prophecy. Writers of great power, even of genius, express their disgust

and hatred

They

for the Self.

They

cry out for the demolition of that false god.

often admire the hardness, even the brutality, of the

man

of the

people, or of the crowd; but, on the whole, the indictment of romantic individualism, itself romantic, and the dislike of humanism, itself of

humanistic origin,

suflBces

them.

None has gone

so far as to

summon

us to

what Dostoevsky's Grand Inquisitor called the "unanimous and harmonious ant-heap" (The Brothers Karamazov, Vol. 52, p. 133c), the final form of collectivity. enter

recent Alexander Two Ivan Denisovich and James novels,

Solzhenitsyn's

Jones's

One Day

The Thin Red

in the Life of

Line,

show

us,

the

one by describing life in a Soviet prison camp, the other in an account of the American infantryman as he advances against the Japanese on Guadalcanal, what the submergence of the individual can be like. There are immense differences, of course, between a combat soldier and a slave laborer, but these differences make the similarities all the more curious. Both books deal with the struggle for survival and with attitudes toward authority and, consequently, toward the Self, on which survival depends. Bread and warmth are what Ivan Denisovich mainly needs; these and the occasional luxury of tobacco incessantly occupy his thoughts as he labors in the arctic darkness. The man who breaks the camp rules cannot live. Confinement in a cold cell will destroy his health. But the man who does not break its rules cannot live either.

He must

pick up what

how

take every opportunity to

may be

useful;

he must learn

to conceal a broken bit of useful metal

from the searching guards, how to sew a piece of bread into his mattress. He cannot Alexander Solzhenitsyn afford, even for a moment, to feel unwell. Because he is feverish and steals a few moments of rest in his bunk, Ivan Denisovich is penalized by the Tartar guard. He asks, "What for, citizen chief?" (Prisoners are not allowed to use the word comrade. ) Solzhenitsyn notes that this question is asked "with more chagrin than he felt in his voice." Ivan knows, however, that he cannot plead with the Tartar, and 139

Literature

he

The

protests merely for the sake of form.

s\Tnpathy or expecting justice

weaken the

tion \^ould

is

ruled out.

ver\'

thought of appeahng to

Any such thought

or expecta-

and must therefore be a betrayal of the ex-naval officer who do not quickly forget their

will to sur\dve

that will. Prisoners like

past dignit)- and have not learned to check their tongues wdll eat cold

food in jail, and they will die of it. At twentv^ degrees below zero, thinly clad and underfed, a man cannot Hve. Ivan Deniso\-ich reflects, "There wouldn't be a warm comer for a whole month. Xot even a doghouse. And

were out of the question. There was nothing to build them with. Let your work \^"arm you up, that was yom* only sahation." And elsewhere he obser\'es, "Real jail was when you were kept back from work." He is therefore grateful to the Tartar for imposing a work penalt)-. fires

self- discipline and rugged peasant cunning have enabled endure years of labor in the taiga. He will not think about the authorities, about go\-emment, about rights, about his own unjust imprisonment, about the sufferings of the other prisoners, about home and family— all this would vex his heart needlessly and waste energy. His thoughts are all of bread, sugar, fish stews, boots, and of being the sort

Spartan

I\"an to

man who

of

will

Karataev Beziikhov learns

Platon

552b-5o5c.

make in

I\-an

Of the meek virtues of a man like whose simple wisdom Pierre

Peace,

in captiN-it)-, there

Though

)

the grade.

War and

scarcely a hint. (See Vol. 51, pp.

is

Denisovich

is

not without

a

rudimentary'

meager as his diet. At the day's end, he thanks God for sur\i\al. "Glor\- be to Thee, O Lord. Another day over. Thank You I'm not spending tonight in the cells. Here it's still bearable."

religious faith, this faith

is

as

Alyosha, a religious prisoner in the next bunk, o\-erhears the whispered

words and urges I\an Deniso\ich to pray. I\an Denisovich, however, is dangerous. "Prayers," he says, "are like

repHes that prayer, like hope,

those appeals of ours. Either they don't get through or they're returned with rejected' scrawled across 'em." Faith will neither move moimtains nor shorten the prisoner's sentence. But the Baptist Ah'osha is horrified

mere thought of freedom. "In freedom," he says, "your last grain be choked with weeds. Here you have time to think about your soul." If it be God's wiU that Alyosha should sit in prison, somehow it works out all right for him. "But for whose sake am I here?" says Ivan Denisovich. "Because we weren't ready for war in forty-one? For that? But was that my fault?" But these theoretical considerations are not ^•e^^• important, and the religious nai\'ete of Alyosha the Baptist may be intended to satisf}' the anti-religious demands of Soviet literary by

tlie

of faith will

.

.

.

policy.

Ivan Denisovich has greater factual, or documentar}-, than literary

work, lacking in color and passion, in dramatic however, are strangely eloquent, and the modest)- or flatness with which they are stated is suited to the sub-

interest. It is a pedestrian

vision. ver}-

The

facts themselves,

140

Saul Bellow

human

camp and

grimness of the

Ivan's almost de-individuahzed

to

desire to endure.

Such animal endurance, the

entire object of Ivan's struggle, represents,

in itself, a positive or heroic activity to certain

whom

dramatist like Bertolt Brecht, to called individual,

and

in

whose view

modern

all

human

writers.

For a

is

really the so-

realities

must undergo

the individual

a radical review, the truth should be sought in illusionless endurance.

His Galileo says, "I don't understand a fill

his belly."

The purpose

man who

of such a statement

is

doesn't use his

mind

to

not to debase the mind

but to elevate the body, as Mr. Abel in his Metatheatre argues. Whatever we wish to assert about mankind must be squared with the commonest

human

facts of ofiFered

conduct, and the interpretation of those

by authority and

tradition

is

not acceptable to Galileo. Such

are present, though seldom so clearly stated, in most

are quite explicit, however, in

common

The Thin Red

facts

issues

modern books. They

Line.

war makes men of boys is of course old stuff. What interests James Jones is the civilian society that sends forth the boys, and the kind of brutality that shapes them into manhood. The slack codes of family and community collapse in situations of primitive violence, and conventional beliefs are exposed as impositions which an illusionless man will never take as his own again, though the wisdom of con-

That

venience, the

wisdom

of the survivor,

counsel an apparent acceptance.

The boy

may still

imagines that he has the value of an individual,

and that

his survival

is

a matter of

great concern to someone, somewhere.

hardened

man

The

has realized that the truth

is

otherwise; he has been thrust into the path of destruction

by the people

at

home, and

the sooner he grasps what this means the

scheme whether he stands or falls. The older, wiser, tougher men, the professionals, underbetter. It matters little in the greater

of things

James Jones

Someone like First Sergeant Welsh with absolute or metaphysical conviction. Of those who do not understand he is intolerant, and he waits with a certain eagerness for reality to punish the ignorant, the credulous, the naive, and the immature. Welsh's toughness and harshness is more than a personal attitude; it is also his rudimentary wisdom. He drives away a young soldier in the combat area who wants permission to dig a slit trench near his. To cling to some-

stand

this.

believes

it

one else is miserable; it betrays an unformed character, for which the seasoned combat soldier has an intuitive contempt. The word that expresses 141

Literature

Welsh

man, can care about in this world it and mutters the word to himself like an incantation— "Property." The wise have it; the rest are suckers. But even Sergeant Welsh has irrational impulses of generosity. He crawls out under fire to bring back a wounded man. The e£Fort is wasted, the man is dying, and Welsh returns to cover. "Sobbing audibly for breath, he made himself a solemn unspoken promise never again to let his screwy wacked-up emotions get the better of his common for is

all

that a sensible

He

"Property."

man, a

real

has no clear idea what he means by

sense."

In these circumstances, a "fact" level. Terror,

blood

lust,

is

men

whatever brings

to a

greed, and sexual excitement are the

common

main

facts.

One

of Jones's characters, not ordinarily given to reflection, goes so far

as to

wonder whether the craving

may

not be an ineradicable cause of wars. Under threat of death and

for a peculiar sort of sexual gratification

liberated from ordinary selfhood, these soldiers are subject to fierce bursts of cruelty

and

perversity.

A

mythologist might say, in the terms of which

modern thought has grown so fond, that the presiding god god of individuation, but Dionysus, who represents the

is

not Apollo,

instincts,

the

species.

Powers, in Morte D'Urban, observes life in a very diflFerent sphere. JF.Father Urban, the hero of his novel, belongs to the imaginary

He

is an active worldly priest, much in demand charming man, fond of food and sports and company. Urban serves his order well in Chicago, and the decision of his superior to transfer him to a remote part of Minnesota is, to say

order of

St.

Clement.

as a speaker, a sociable,

tlie least,

trying to his patience.

He

finds

it

incomprehensible.

He

obeys,

of course, but with dragging feet. His impression of the country north of Minneapolis as

and

he views

it

from the

train

window

is

that

it is

without people. It didn't attract, it didn't repel. streams than he'd see in Illinois, but they weren't working. November was winter here. Too many white frame farmhouses, not new and not old, not at aU what Father Urban would care to come home to for Thanksgiving or Christmas. Rusty implements. Brown dirt. Grey skies. Ice. No snow. A great deal of talk about this on the train. Father Urban dropped entirely out of it after an hour or so. The Voyageur arrived in Duesterhaus a few minutes before eleven that morning, and Father Urban was the only passenger to get off. flat

treeless, Illinois

He saw more

.

.

.

Father Wilfred, whom Urban had known during their novitiate as Bunny Bestudnik, is head of the Clementine Foundation in Duesterhaus. The property is in poor shape, the means of the Fathers are limited, and Wilfred is trying to make things go as eflBciently as possible.

He

thinks of

little

besides

free rides on the raihoad.

tile,

The

hardware, paint, machinery,

fuel,

and

interests of the Fathers are approximately

142

Saul Bellow

who have a place to run. Urban, something of a sophisticate, and he sniffs at these hicks. He is far from humble, as he is himself aware. WHfred is pok\-, unimaginative, and bumbling. Urban is knowledgeable and worldly, charming and proud. Mr. Powers' theme is the rehgious life of those of any group of Midvvesterners

as his

name

hints,

is

average Americans, and he develops with a fine talent for wr\' comedy. He avoids strong contrasts and emphatic statements and,

practical, it

at times, follows this

method

of restraint to

In Morte D'Urban, Roman Catholicism meets The American Way of Life, and the results of this encounter are not quite clear, because the spiritual quahties of Urban, though there is no question of the genuineness of his calling, are ver\- dimly outlined. The Clementine Order has a wealthy patron named BOly Cosgrove, who is fond of Father Urban's company. Billy is generous but erratic; he is in fact a spoiled, bullying, idle man whose life is one ferocious, unending hoHday. He is a big spender, and he likes doing things for the Church. Urban is half amused by willful, playful Billy, pardons his the verge of vagueness or

vulgarity

and

his

passivit\-.

insolence,

J.

F.

Fowers

and rather enjoys the good meals and

the fine cars— Urban has a weakness for sports and for automobiles. Partly because he enjoys

it,

partly for the good of the order.

Urban

accompanies Billy on a fishing trip to the North Woods. There Billy's temper becomes ugly. He has had bad luck with the fish at Bloodsucker Lake and, seeing a stag swim by, he decides that he must have the antlers. He tries to drown the animal by holding its head under water. Such cruelt\- is more than Urban can bear. He speeds up the outboard

motor so that Billy falls in the water. When he is rescued, Billy then dumps Father Urban into the lake and speeds off. The effect of this is by no means comic. Urban had been thinking, in the boat before these events, about the matter of Uving or dying for the Faith, and had made a comparison between Billy and WiUiam the Conqueror, who was "mild to good men of God and stark beyond all bounds to those who withsaid his will." This parallel is mildly amusing. Billy could ne\er give a damn about history-. He is a completely contemporarv" American phenomenon, bent utterly on having his owti way, violently pursuing his happiness and losing none of his strength in thought. Of the two, it is he who has 143

Literature

the

more passionate

character. Urban's reHgion

is

far

from

intense.

It,

too,

perhaps American— Hberal, relaxed, nice, comfortable, unobtrusive, rather unfocused. The book concludes with two highly significant changes in the Hfe of Urban. After he has been struck in the head is

by a

golf ball,

he has tormenting headaches and

fits

of dizziness. It

appointed Father Provincial and returns to Chicago. As Provincial, he disappoints everyone, but it presently becomes clear that he is unweU. To hide his attacks from callers, he turns

is

at this

aside pietv"

time that he

and pretends

to

is

read his

breviar\%

gaining

a

reputation

"which, however, was not entirely unwarranted now."

The

for

con-

cluding pages of the novel are written without irony and are, I think, intended to show a changed Urban, mart)Ted by sufferings and brought to the fulfillment of his religious destiny. Actually, they show us very little;

they attempt, rather, to

progress of Urban's soul.

Its

tell

we cannot expect to follow the incommunicable.

us that

condition

is

Mr. Powers abides by the convention accepted by most realistic He does not give his characters thoughts or emotions they

writers.

are not "realistically" likely to have. It is odd that religious novelists Hke Powers, or like Graham Greene or EvcKti Waugh, with whom he obviously agrees, should be unwilling to offer a specifically religious psychology in their books. Anything deeper than the ordinary circumstances of life permit us to see may only be hinted at, and since we are confined by these ordinary circumstances in corruption, in states of boredom, and in egotism, the most spiritual person is the one who suffers most through the human condition. The heroes of these novelists are thus for the most part scarcely articulate martyrs.

such experience can onl\' be hinted at In mvths and images. To speak about it talk of darkness, lab\Tinths, Minotaur terrors. But that world does not take the place of this one .

.

.

We

says T.

S.

Ehot's psychiatrist, Reilly, in

The Cocktail

Party.

The

realities

world are more terrible than the darkest inventions of the imagination. Mr. Powers describes those realities as ably as Fran9ois Mauriac, or Graham Greene, or Eliot, or any other Christian writer, and he is just as reticent in describing spiritual experience. But what, after all, is a spiritual life in the twentieth century? These of

this

writers refuse to enhghten us. Perhaps the fault

enlightenment

ing

with

is

ours, for

demand-

that a ought to be a reality within our grasp. But after all, we are reading novels or witnessing plays by vvriters who have accepted the challenge of a play or novel and ought to show us the actualities

our

usual

positi\dstic

assurance

spiritual life

of

a

rehgious

life.

In almost ever\^

case,

the

choice

of

a

spiritual

course results not in correction but in death, and the Christianit>' of

144

Saul Bellow the

modern

religious novel

is

the Christianity of the Passion and the

be a

These writers between "the termite colony and the Mystical Body." Such a view perhaps expresses Romantic disappointment more than it does Christian faith. Cross;

its

religious life turns out to

saintly death.

see our choice, as the philosopher Gabriel Marcel puts

Gabriel,

it,

lying

the hero of Philip Roth's Letting Go, has been brought

up

These "higher things" interfere somewhat with his happiness. But though the shadow of pain may pass over him as he eats and drinks, it is never too dark to find the spoon. He is aware that it is somewhat degrading in a world like this to be a vulgar epicurean, a petty to lead a comfortable life but also to think of "higher things."

bourgeois creature.

He

reads (Gabriel

feelings, great enterprises, ties,

and he

pursue

feels

his private

it

is

sublime

is

a graduate student) of noble

sensibili-

faintly ridiculous to

ends so aggressively and

ambitiously, but this does not alter his castiron

selfishness.

He

has

just

enough

self-

awareness or "unhappy consciousness" to consider himself sensitive in his love affairs, and he can be pleased with his insightfulness while he does what young men of his class generally do. As in Lewis Carroll's "The Walrus and the Carpenter," tears are shed, but the little oysters are eaten anyway. Gabriel wants to behave well. He tries to obtain a baby for adoption by an unhappy couple, and the pages dealing with the pregnant waitress who is prepared to give away her child are among the liveliest in the book. But the personal Hfe with its problems of personal adjustment and its pursuit of personal happiness cannot be as interesting to us as it is to Mr. Roth and Gabriel. Mr. Roth is evidently not aware that he is strengthening the case of the Philip Roth antipersonalists by being so solemn about Gabriel's troubles. We know from our first meeting with Gabriel that he is a rather tough young man who, in basic matters— food, shelter, money, advancement— will always make out. There is nothing to be said against a prudent hero or against any hero whose case is clearly and interestingly stated. The difficulty is that Gabriel expects to fascinate everyone though there is no one who fas-

cinates

him.

145

Literature

John Updike's The Centaur, is a youthful hero of a different sort. He presents us with a case of what modem

slightly

Here are some

of the

Peter,

in

with regrettable ponderousness, typical thoughts

call

and impressions

sensibility^.

critics,

of a sensibility:

section of lavender shadow under the walnut painting of the old yard. I had loved that tree; when I was a child there had been a swing attached to the hmb that was just a scrumble of almost-black in the picture. Looking at this streak of black, I reli^ed the ver\' swipe of mv palette knife, one second of my life that in a remarkable way had held firm. It was this firmness, I think, this potential fixing of a few passing seconds, that attracted me, at the age of five, to art. For it is at about that age, isn't it, that it sinks in upon us that things do, if not die, certainly change, wiggle, slide, retreat, and, Uke dabs of sunlight on the bricks under a grape arbor on a breezy June day, shujBfle out of all identity? I

had been admiring a

tree in

my

This passage offers several illuminating curiosities to our study. These are the

words and ideas

of a high-school boy.

At

fifteen

he aheady has a

He remembers

with a tone of elegy and elderly wisdom the beginning of his aesthetic development. Jonathan Swift in old age was said to have congratulated himself on having written so well in his youth, but Mr. Updike's adolescent hero is moved by the

nostalgia for early childhood.

artistic triumphs he had at the age of five. This deeply subjective musing requires a careful choice of words and rhythms, images. A poet might have written tliis paragraph (if he had thought it worth his while). A student of literature can detect in it echoes of Henry James, and of Virginia Woolf, and of the James Joyce who wrote Dubliners and Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Sensibility is for the most part youthful. It owes that to romanticism, which celebrated

early life— the feeling heart of childhood, the emotions of adolescence.

when it dethroned Zeus, welcomed the advent of Prometheus. Mr. Updike's Peter plays Prometheus to his father's Chiron, but the author does not succeed in making this myth take in the Early romanticism,

Pennsylvania countryside.

He

has more success in his

Mr. Updike writes in the

stories.

title

"When

stor\'

of

moved to Firetown," new collection. Pigeon

they

his

Feathers, "things were upset, displaced, rearranged." David, a sensitive is frightened when he picks up H. G. Wells's Outline and reads that Jesus was something of a communist, "an obscure pohtical agitator, a kind of hobo in a minor colony of the Roman Empire." He cannot accept the answers given by his mother and by the pastor, the Reverend Dobson, in Sunday School, to his questions about death and immortahty. Nature itself fails to give him comfort. He is puzzled by the pleasure it gives his mother to take long walks. "To him the brown stretches of slowly rising and falling land expressed only a huge exhaustion." "What do you want Heaven to be?"

and only

child,

of History

146

Saul Bellow

mother asks. "He was becoming angry, sensing her surprise at him. She had assumed that Heaven had faded from his head long ago. She had imagined that he had already entered, in the secrecy of silence, the conspiracy that he now knew to be all around him." Since David is a little hero of sensibility, it might have been predicted that he would resolve his difficulties aesthetically. After he has shot some pigeons in the bam, he contemplates their feathers and is enchanted and consoled. "The God who had lavished such craft upon these worthless birds would not destroy His whole Creation by refusing to let David live his

makes Mr. Updike's children precocious, almost The boy has

forever." Reflectiveness elderly.

He

does not leave David without a touch of irony.

killed these inoffensive birds but sees the proof of his immortality in

But the story

their feathers.

The

faith in craftsmanship.

course, the religion of

itself

reveals that the writer has

religion of the writer of sensibility

great is,

of

art.

mature should be described as a conspiracy and resignation is to be expected in any American story of adolescence. The theme goes back at least as far as Sherwood Anderson's I Want to Know Why, and some students of literature find it also in Fenimore Cooper and Mark Twain. In J. D. Salinger's Catcher in the Rye and in his more recent chronicles of the Glass

That the world

of the

to conceal ignorance

family, the horror of an adult society

is

also

recognized by boys on the threshold of maturity.

as

These adolescents are often described

deeply and naturally intuitive; they

possess

what

called "the

a

first

Chinese heart,"

still

once world of

philosopher

and

in this

corruption and compromise they are the only

ones in whom democratic and liberal values, mercy and generosity, may be found. In the nineteenth century, too, maturity trayed as either villainous

The

Way

or

is

often por-

sad.

Butler's

of All Flesh describes the libera-

youth from the tyranny of the elders, and Butler observes elsewhere, perhaps only half jestingly, that it might be best for a child to come into the world with no parents John Updike to bring him up but with a twenty thousandpound note pinned to his swaddling clothes. The parental figures who dominate nineteenth-century literature are craggy, whiskered types who personify discipline, renunciation, order, hypocrisy, control. Even so balanced a person as J. S. Mill cannot conceal a certain bitterness in his Autobiography when he describes how tion of

147

Literature his father,

with the best of intentions, drilled

all

feeling out of him.

Mill lost— lost temporarily— when he

was plunged into despair What useful and meaningful life; him a before he had that conviction his was when he had slowly recovered that conviction, the crisis was over. Ivan Karamazov tells his brother Alyosha in a mood of rebellion that while he does indeed love life, loves the sticky little leaves of spring, he expects and prefers an early death, possibly foreseeing that with maturity he will lose his rebellious spirit and become merely comfortable and cynical. Since he believes that God has created an unjust world, he respectfully oflFers to return his "ticket." (See The Brothers Karamazov, Vol. 52, pp. 118b-126d.) By the end of the century, however, another sort of romantic youthfulness is in evidence which refuses to make itself responsible for the world. It seems no longer necessary to weigh the world and find it wanting; one can find it wanting without going to the trouble of weighing it. The writers most admired in the twentieth century are either intensely subjective, or nihilistic, or both. For them, traditional authority does not exist. State, family, religion are regarded as phantoms. The authority of art itself has been declining among artists, although literature continues to flourish even where the idea of literature is treated with contempt by those who call themselves anti-artists.

reason why immaturity makes so great an appeal to American The writers, or to those postwar European writers who have come

under American influence,

is

perhaps not too

difficult to discover.

The

enforced passivity of the individual confronted by the huge power of

modern organizations resembles the impotence of childhood. Those who say yea to these combinations of power are not children but adults. There occurs, consequently, a clinging to childhood and youth which may explain certain middle-aged and even elderly Beats and superannuated and gaily wrinkled Peter Pans.

Heaven

lies about us in our infancy! Shades of the prison-house begin to close Upon the growing Boy,

wrote William Wordsworth, and analytic explorations

timent as well, has

Of

his point of view, supported by psychoand discoveries about infancy, and by popular sen-

many

lively exponents.

D. Salinger, a brilliant performer, is easily the best. He gives his allegiance mainly to children and to the young in heart, and writes of them with great warmth and purity. The Catcher in the Rye perhaps argues too closely his romantic theory that the youth, in these,

J.

Wordsworth's words,

some

vatic

moments

Mr. Salinger's

is

"still

that

stories, less

Nature's

Priest."

Holden Caulfield has

make him sound very

unlike a schoolboy. ambitious and ideological, are more successful

148

Saul Bellow

than his novel. But his theme

Love and Squalor, a munion with a little Bananafish, Seymour cide,

is

always the same. In For Esme—with

and privileged comand her small brother. In A Perfect Day for Glass, in Florida with his bride, commits suibut not before he has played in the water with a young child soldier enjoys a very special

girl

and told her his tale of the bananafish. In the title story of his new volume, Rai^e High the Roof Beam, Carpenters, Salinger tells of an odd

wedding party in New York on a hot day during World War II, and exposes the imbecihty of "normal" social conduct. He describes a different war, the one carried on by the regular against the irregular or exceptional members of society. The absent hero is Seymour Glass, who has ideas of his own about love, weddings, and wedding parties. The ladies of the wedding party, and especially the matron of honor, are angry at the fancied humiliation of the bride by the groom. Salinger turns a clear, not altogether kindly Hght on the code of the outraged

women. The matron

of

twenty-four or

in a

honor is described as "a hefty girl of about pink satin dress, with a circlet of artificial forget-me-nots in her hair. There was a distinctly athletic ethos about her, as if, a year or two earlier, she might have majored in physical education in college. In her lap she was holding a bouquet of gardenias rather as though it were a deflated volley-ball." Her husband chucklingly refers to her as a "bloodthirsty wench," apparently familiar with her -five,

The

deflationary powers.

sympathetically.

The

Mrs.

other lady,

Silsburn,

is

treated

more

perspiration has seeped through her heavy pancake

makeup, but she holds her patent-leather purse "as though it were a and she herself an experimentally rouged and powdered, and very unhappy, runaway child." Mrs. Silsbum's childishness earns

favorite doll,

is not a part of the solid, aggressive union of mature females. The groom's brother, who tells the story,

her Salinger's indulgence; she brings a

little

band

of

wedding

matron There he

guests, including the belligerent

of honor, to a small apartment shared

by the young

Glasses.

mixes a pitcher of drinks and defends his brother ardently when the of being a freak who doesn't know how "to relate" to people. "He's absolutely unfit for marriage or anything halfway normal, for goodness' sake," she says. The angry brother rephes that he doesn't

matron accuses him

give a damn what Seymour's mother-in-law "or, for that matter, any professional dilettante or amateur bitch had to say." Seymour is a poet.

"A

poet, for God's sake.

And

I

mean

a poet." Neither matrons nor

mothers-in-law nor psychiatrists will ever see

him

for

what he

really

is.

After this outburst, the brother sits on the edge of the bathtub, alone, reading in Seymour's diary. Seymour, it appears, sees everyone about him with saintly tolerance and love, somehow interprets banalities as divine miracles. A dessert of frozen cream cheese and raspberries served by his bride-to-be makes tears come to his eyes. "(Saigyo says, 'What it is

149

Literature I

know not/But with

was placed on the

gratitude/ My tears

fall.')

A

bottle of ketchup

Fedder

table near me. Muriel apparently told Mrs.

My precious girl." "I felt unbearably put ketchup on everything. happy all evening," he says elsewhere. He observes of Mrs. Fedder that she is a woman "deprived, for life, of any understanding or taste that

I

.

.

for the

main current

.

of poetry that flows through things,

things.

all

be dead, and yet she goes on living, stopping off at delicatessens, seeing her analyst, consuming a novel every night, putting on her girdle, plotting for Muriel's health and prosperity. I love her. I find her unimaginably brave." "Oh, God," Seymour says at last, "if I'm anything by a clinical name, I'm a kind of paranoiac in reverse. I suspect people of plotting to make me happy." She might

as well

and decadence is conThis memoir is An Introduction. expanded in Seymour, tinued and fault in hagiography. prolix, common becomes somewhat a touching, but The vulgarity of a brazen, unfeeling world is tirelessly condemned. The saint forgives, but

The

contrast of purity with social villainy

there

is

much

so

to forgive.

He

is

enraptured

by everything ordinary, though that might appear to other eyes frightful, and he kills himself at the height of his ecstasy.

Now

as

hard to make a virtuous character look real. Readers want hard proof of every claim made for him. The Children of Darkness long perhaps to see the Children of Light, but they examine their credentials with great suspicion. Nowadays, all

writers know,

it

is

they are too sophisticated to sneer at virtue,

however. "Well,

more

They

are

isn't this nice,

more

inclined

really— sweet.

to

say,

We

need

of this endearing romantic childishness."

In this way, a writer like Salinger can be

widely appreciated, while the feelings he deals with remain on an adolescent level. I

/.

doubt whether the naivete of "the first heart" can win out against sophisticated judgment. D. Salinger It is not so easy to confound the wise, for they grow wiser and wiser with time. Nevertheless, Salinger does what a writer should do; he stubbornly clings to his fragile idealism. There is a nobility of feeling in his stories which is, unfortunately, rare in contemporary literature. Perhaps such nobility can only belong to innocence or be appreciated only within a small circle.

The elect.

children of the Glass family are a very small

They have

their oriental

community

of the

Buddhist connections, but their strong150

Saul Bellow

commonly happens in among others) that can be appreciated by the initiates alone, by the most in case, the young and the pure in heart are in.

local sympathies

est

American writing the best things people. In this

Samuel

are with one another. It

Hemingway and

(in

Fitzgerald

Butler declared, nearly a century ago, that he could bear

lying but hated inaccuracy. John O'Hara, too, has a passion for

and

none but precise facts. would eat Lowney's chocolates (or Samoset, Page and Shaw's, or Whitman's); he knows exactly what it would mean to be chosen for Walter Camp's Second correctness,

He knows

as a social historian tolerates

that in 1926 a lady with a sweet tooth

how far the bullet of a .30-06 would carry; how a man might have founded a black-market fortune during World War II; how often a garage mechanic in Trenton, New Jersey, will need to

All-America team;

change clothes. His information seems inexhaustible; it is ofiFered, with some pride, as the real thing, and it is almost always fascinating. In reading the twenty-three stories of his

Cod

new collection. The Cape when they are recorded

Lighter, one can feel the strength of facts

by a writer who loves them to fanaticism. In his line of work, Mr. O'Hara is a master. His ear for dialogue is faultless. In stories of the 1920's, like The Engineer, no character will be heard using the slang of a later period. In this avoidance of false notes and of excesses in is an evident pridefulness. It is pardonable, but it is also Weeks, the engineer, moving into a hotel, makes his arrangements with Jimmy the Negro porter in a conversation that covers five pages. He settles laundry prices with him, he tells him he wants his suits pressed without creases in the sleeve, he ascertains whether, in shining

dialogue there

noticeable.

shoes,

Jimmy

When

takes out the laces.

they ask.

nice and fresh.

Well, Yes,

It is

as

not

I

do

answers,

run them under the tap and rinse 'em out to look it

right.

But some don't

ask.

I ask.

sir, I

I like

I

Jimmy

to

seen that.

have

my

Weeks

things just so ...

alone

who wants

who know

things to be just

so.

O'Hara

is

just

His fullest admiration their jobs, and, although the engineer himself

cunning and penetrating

goes to those

.

in matters of detail.

bad egg, O'Hara nevertheless records his accomplishand energy that amount to sympathy. Realistic writers follow a method which can be traced back to Montaigne, of circling over random facts waiting for an opportunity to pounce on the essential. O'Hara shows how useful that method remains. But there are times when the essences he comes up with are not very essential. Certain of his stories run like little trolleys, bright and glittering, but

turns out to be a

ments with a

relish

151

Literature

without a passenger. Sunday Morning, for instance, has almost no content. Justice makes an unsuccessful attempt to deal with problems of conscience that trouble a man in the autumn of his life, visited, unexpectedly,

by sexual

desires.

He

writes.

I explain to myself what happened to me? I came to life had before, but this time it was the thin chill of a distant autumn and not the recollected pressure of a real woman against me

How

can

again, as I

me

hardly even thought of her; I then I began thinking that this new life would if I did not go back again to that hideous house. This new life I was feeling was hideous, too, but I had lost any sense of beauty that I had ever had. Yes, I thought, killed by an early frost, and to hell with it. One thing killed, another thing come to life; and what was gone was truly gone and better gone and useless. Only this hideous new life was not dead. that brought

to life so desperately. I

thought of myself. remain incomplete

And

is rare in O'Hara. He seldom comes at sensitive feelings from the front. For obvious reasons, he does better when he approaches them indirectly. On the whole O'Hara prefers people who are honest, blunt and plain, stoical and de-

This sort of lapse from clarity and good judgment

cent. Ernest

Pangbom

in

The

Professors, dis-

covering that he has judged his colleague

Jack Veech wrongly, considers whether he

John O'Hara

to a class of initiates

who

should say anything. "A compliment would be rejected, and a word of pity would be unthinkable. Indeed the compliment was being paid to Pangbom; Veech honored him with his confidence and accorded him honor more subtly, more truly, by asking no further assurances of his silence." These are the quiet virtues O'Hara likes. They remind one of Kipling. Here the "sovereign self" of romanticism is exchanged for the more reticent and undemonstrative decent self. This decent self derives great satisfaction from belonging have a feeling for the right thing. The romanti-

cism of an elaborate and possibly self-indulgent inner

O'Hara

as

Under

it

was by

his master,

life is

rejected

by

Hemingway.

pseudonym of Abram Tertz, a Russian writer has pubnumber of stories in the West. The latest of them is the most extraordinary. It is a novella called The Icicle, and it is fantastic in the manner of Gogol and Dostoevsky and the great Hoffmann of the Tales, demonstrating with genius the thesis advanced by Tertz the

lished a small

152

Saul Bellow

On

he exposes the inconreahsm is always necessarily critical of institutions and the Soviet system permits no real criticism, writers are in the impossible and humiliating situation of appearing, under compulsion, to be honest, and their only possible compensation lies in their agreement with the ultimate aims of socialism and their vision of an earthly heaven fulfilling the prophecies of Marx. Tertz argues daringly and with much historical substance that art can thrive under despots, and he calls on the Soviet authorities to allow what can be done to be done. With permission, which it would be wise for the dictatorship to grant, writers could "express the grand himself in his essay

Socialist Realism. In this

sistency of the oflBcial Soviet

demand

for realism. Since

implausible sense of our era."

an impressive demonstration of what this can mean, and human and artistic powers as Tertz's should endure and develop in spite of half a century of suppression, purges, wars, in spite of wooden styles oflBcially supported, and in spite of the ignorance of the world which might be supposed the inevitable result

The

it is

Icicle

is

perfectly astonishing that such

of Soviet policies. Says Tertz,

I put my hope in a phantasmagoric art, with hypotheses instead of a Purpose, an art in which the grotesque will replace realistic descriptions of ordinary life. Such an art would correspond best to the spirit of our time. May the fantastic imagery of Hoffmann and Dostoevsky, of Goya, Chagall and Mayakovski (the most socialist realist of all), and of many other realists and nonrealists teach us to be truthful with the aid of the

absurd and the

fantastic.

In support of such a view, similitude (of the that

it

O'Hara

it is

also possible to argue that realistic veri-

become burdensome and difiEcult, and which only a small number

sort) has

requires a degree of special knowledge

of fanatical devotees can attain. In

even

an era of specialization such as ours,

know what know what he is writing

a botanist, studying plant hormones, let us say, will not

a colleague in plant ecology

is

doing. Literally to

about would impose an impossible strain on the most dedicated realist. The most informational of novelists can no longer adequately inform us. The world is really too much for the realist to cope with. Furthermore (and here, too, literary history brings us back to Montaigne), the writer in the modem era has always avoided overspecialization. His mentality has represented the high average; it has represented a comprehensive rather than an exclusive principle.

A

writer can intrigue us

by

imitating

do it. But the specialist. Balzac and Zola did so. realistic hard of a modern experience has demonstrated the absurdity still and facts pertinent standard in hterature. If a writer must know all

O'Hara and others

still

cover a wide range of subjects, he must give up the omniscience without which fiction cannot be written. It is thoroughly understandable there-

153

Literature fore that

men

like Tertz (or like

Nabokov

in the

United States) should

determine instead to follow the path of the absurd toward the truth. The Icicle is written in the form of a message sent by the author him-

shape he will assume in the future; here evolution and reincarnation are grotesquely, laughably, touchingly combined. The poor writer is still deeply in love with his beautiful but faithless Natasha, and self to the

enough

to endure the transmigration of souls. conferred on a young Russian. He becomes suddenly A clairvoyant. Helpless, he sees past and future. He knows whether people will pass examinations or not, when they will die and how. Before his this love is strong

terrible gift is

He

them

were once and as A young engineer named Belchikov suddenly has an antique fireman's helmet on his head which gleams and dissolves, and the engineer proves also to have been a prostitute of ancient origin, and before that a priest. Dazzled by these transformations, the young man (to whom it is granted to know himself in all his earlier forms, as far back as the fish in the primordial seas) begins to think that there is an analogy between economic and very eyes they are transformed. they are to be.

Women

sees

sprout beards and

as they

men grow

other forms of determinism, that just as every

breasts.

man

is the product of economic forces which are responsible for everything in the world .... the individual, the character, the personality— or even, if you like, the soul— also have no part in life

even a Leonardo da Vinci

reflexes of our vision, like the spots we see when we press our eyeballs or look at the bright sun for a long time without blinking. We are used to seeing people against a background of air, which looks empty and transparent, while the human figure appears to be of great firmness and density. Now, we are wrong to attribute the unvarying density and sharpness of the human silhouette, which comes out particularly well in the bright light of day, to man's inner world and to call this his "character" or "soul." Li fact there is no soul but only a gap in the air through which mutually unconnected psychic substances rush in nervous gusts, changing according to the age and circumstances.

and are only

What our pseudonymous young Russian is telling us— and it is in full harmony with his own situation as the unknown poet— is not after all vastly different from what many of the advanced writers of the West say with less vigor and comic effect. Here, too, we are informed that personality is not what civilization by its conventional teaching led us to think. Is there not some sort of agreement between these metaphors of Tertz and the strange visions of Picasso, in which men and women appear like brilliant phantoms, human and animal traits sharing the same being, and bursting out with eyes, noses, and lips, as though in the grip of evolutionary forces? Though it was held in an ancient view that the "carnal," or outward, man wasted away while the spirit was renewed daily (II Cor. 4:16), later beliefs affirmed strongly that the

and bone had a

fixed determinate character,

154

and that

man

of flesh

this character

was

Saul Bellow

immensely

now widespread, under the inhuman being is an "anonymous favorite theme of speculation among scientists when philosophy (the late P. W. Bridgman was one of the

significant.

The

conviction

is

fluence of biology and physics, that the force." This

is

a

they venture into

most recent), but

it

and

historians, critics,

is

even more enthusiastically explored by literary They have found theories like the Heisen-

artists.

berg theory of indeterminacy, or the notion of entropy, of the greatest fascination and utility. A few with horror, but more with melancholy joy, like

Andre Gide

or

Thomas Mann, have accepted

the obliteration of the

personal as the historical fact (to be unhistorical death).

The novel

of ideas has

added

little

to the

is

a fate worse than

development

of ideas.

human

situation

Writers are in general more effective in appreciating a

than in intellectual discovery. Too often in

recent times they have been

glad to work out the implications of scientific or philosophical theories

own deeper intuitions, as artists should. Writers have not merely turned away from obsolete ideas of personality. With rare exceptions, they have attacked and demolished them with a instead of consulting their

ferocity

and loathing not

to

be explained simply by a change

climate or an advance in thought.

The

of

mental

old parents sitting in trash cans, in

a play by Samuel Beckett, and the scenes of perversion and cannibalism in a book like William Burroughs' Naked Lunch may indicate, it is to be hoped, that the false gods of individuality have now been utterly pulverized by the last champions of iconoclasm and that we are now ready for a different and truer vision of things. There is a danger to literature in such earnestness. When novels and plays are written to test out the

ideas of Heidegger on existence, or those of Heisenberg on location, the human content of art must necessarily dwindle, and Western writers illustrating ideas

Socialist-Realists

begin to take on a peculiar resemblance to Russia's are also working out a thesis.

who

why a novella like The Icicle, of independent inspiration, remodern ideas but not derivative from them, is so stirring and flecting marvelous. While other writers steadily chew their Marxian cabbage or This

is

perform the familiar routines of despair, a writer like Tertz, as free from the oligarchy at home as from fashion abroad, reveals a new source of literary power. There is a hint in The Icicle that another force contends with change, namely love. When the beautiful, faithless Natasha confesses that she is pregnant but doesn't know by whom, her lover, with his vision of natural history, brushes this aside as trifling. He sees human beings merging grotesquely into one another, and species into species as well. How can a particular detail of paternity be important? But love

and deeper matter, and from the void our hero still cries out to Natasha that he loves her. For those who experience love, these questions of identity have a more than theoretical significance— those is

a different

whom we

love exist.

155

Literature

Ignazio Silone explains in a and Wine why it seemed tells

of

watching the face of a

version of this book in a

prefatory note to his to

him necessary

woman

German

new

version of Bread

to rewrite his novels.

in a Swiss train as she

read the

He first

translation:

Fortunately, that edition of my novel did not have a photograph of the author; if she had recognized me I would certainly have been very embarrassed. In fact, an unusual discomfort was forcing itself into my

mind. The page the the contrary, at that

woman was reading did not satisfy me at all. On moment it seemed even stupid to me. Why had

could have foreseen that people like this would read thought to myself, I certainly would have omitted that page. I would have left others out too; and I would have thought more about certain expressions. I asked mvself why most writers, in writing a book, think more often of their colleagues and the critics, who read a hundred books a year, and not of the strangers to whom the book can have some personal importance. I

written

my

book,

it? If I

I

Such a sense of Most writers have

responsibility their guild in

America, a novelist whose aim

is

very rare. Mr. Silone

is

quite right.

mind and not the ordinary

it is

reader. In

to reach the great reading public gen-

erally wants profit and fame. A century ago the novelist could still be a prominent figure at the center of the life of his country, a spokesman, reformer, prophet, like Dickens in England or Dostoevsky in Russia. Today

the novelist has yielded this position to the expert, the opinion-molder, the pollster, the psychologist, et cetera. Mr. James Reston of the

New

York Tunes recently argued that the journalist played the role of the novelist in the twentieth century. He would have been more nearly right if he had said that Henry Luce had replaced Balzac and Dickens, and that the drama or melodrama of Time or Newsweek had captured the reading pubhc that once waited for the weekly episode from The Three Musketeers or Va7iity Fair. The separation of the writer from the great public was accompanied in the nineteenth century by an increased refinement in the art of fiction. Private rather than public questions began to preoccupy the novelist as he moved from the center of public attention. He tended to become indifferent, in certain cases positively hostile, to the average consumer of printed matter. Painters and musicians as well as poets and novelists developed esoteric tendencies which, in certain instances, made their work almost as inaccessible to the general public as that of theoretical physicists or mathematicians. Revolutionary ideals, while they lasted, attached many European writers to a wider

public, but disappointment in

communism intensified the aesthetic motivation of writers so that moral questions tended to become increasingly peripheral. In a book like Thomas Mann's Doctor Faustus, aesthetic

preoccupations of the greatest refinement are paralleled by the barbarism of modem civilized masses. A connection is seen by Mann between the fanatical, remote artist and the degeneracy of fascism. As Mr. Lionel

156

Said Bellow

moral significance, and the possibility of when selfhood is destroyed. But Mr. Silone, for himself as writer, and for his characters, begins with the moral question. The fact that people wish to be morally effective seems to

Abel argues

in his Metatheatre,

tragedy as well, must cease to exist

make Of

individuals of them.

the old version of Bread

Silone says that

the fullness of

my

and Wine,

he had written

it

"out of

heart just after the Fascist

occupation of Ethiopia and during the Purge Trials in

Moscow, which had been

set

up by

remnants of the opThe inhuman behavior of Genposition. eral Graziani to Ethiopian combatants and civiHans, the enthusiasm of many Italians for the conquest of the Empire, the passivity of most of the population, and the impotence of the anti-Fascists all filled the soul with a deep Stalin to destroy the last .

.

.

Ignazio Silone

sense of shame." Silone has the distinction of being simple without being naive; he is

it is very obvious that he belongs to a traditional which compassion and justice are not rhetorical expresirregular and even old-fashioned as that may seem in a world in

genuinely serious, and

community sions,

which

in

widely agreed that such things belong to the past. the revolutionary hero of Bread and Wine, sick in body and uneasy in mind, returns to his native mountains in the south of Italy after fifteen years of exile. Disguised as a priest, he lives in a it is

Pietro

Spina,

tiny impoverished village, unable to continue his revolutionary

work

because of his broken health and his disillusionment with the "red fascism" of the Communists. What Spina observes in his village retreat are the ancient facts of poverty, labor, himger, and ignorance. But the life of the peasant, though it is miserable, produces an elementary effectively

realism not to be found in

cities.

Moral and religious

qualities are

still

alive in primitive situations.

Spina was once the favorite pupil of an old priest,

Don

Benedetto,

who

Church and now lives in retirement. The two are able to meet only briefly, and Spina is greatly moved by the old man's words. "I, too, in the dregs of my aflEictions, have asked myself: where is God and why has He abandoned us?" says the priest.

has had

diflBculties of his

own with

the

Certainly the loudspeakers and bells announcing the new slaughter were not God. Nor were the cannon shots and the bombing of the Ethiopian villages, of which we read ever)' day in the newspapers. But if one poor man gets up in the middle of the night and writes on the walls of the village with a piece of charcoal or varnish, "Down with the War," the presence of God is undoubtedly behind that man.

157

Literature

Mr. Powers' book, an occult subject. The Urban encourages mysticism of a singularly inactive variety. Comfortable Midwestern community life seems to induce a spiritual vagueness and lack of focus unknown to Silone's religious radical or fiery old priest, surrounded by hunger and oppression, conditions very like those in which Christianity had its beginnings. Reviewing the literary situation of the 1920's, George Orwell connected the pes-

Here

faith

not,

is

as

in

prosperity that surrounds

simism of the Georgians with the prosperity of that epoch. He spoke of a "golden age of the rentier intellectual," and said that everyone with a safe income of 500 pounds a year "began training himself in tedium vitae."

He

accused writers of enjoying solid comfort and hanging on to same time— having their cake and eating it

spiritual distinction at the

an ornament instead of a cause. Silone one can say this. But then his subject matter makes things easier for him. He has two worlds, the archaic world of the Italian village and the new world of the warlike dictator, and these offer

too— making of

is

their Christianity

not a novelist of

whom

a simple contrast. Faith for Silone of poverty

manifest

and

labor.

itself in

A modern

is

the ancient faith in

a modern, urban setting

its

ancient setting

how

faith would where circumstances are more

reader longs to see

complex and ambiguous. In its new version. Bread and Wine has lost some of its freshness and youthfulness, but it is purer in form and deeper in feeling. Reading it again, the Swiss lady in the train would learn less about Mussolini's Italy, but would see all the principal figures more distinctly and find them incomparably more moving. It was for her, as Silone tells us, that he rewrote the book, for after she had left the train he "continued to reflect on the great dignity and power of literature and on the unworthiness of most writers, myself included."

Yukio

Mishima's After the Banquet also mixes elements of traditional and modern life. Kazu, the marvelous self-made woman who owns a famous restaurant patronized by right-wing Tokyo politicians and bigwigs, is over fifty but still ripe and vigorous. Her skin is white and glossy, her eyes shine with open good nature, her character is simple. She is easily touched, rather stubborn, intensely practical. She loves excitement, and though she knows that at her age she can no longer expect the passionate happiness of love, she is by no means willing to live austerely. A Japanese Wife of Bath (see Chaucer, Canterbury Tales, Vol. 22, pp. 167a-b, 256a-277a), she is far too vital for that. She is still capable of a sort of love. Her insight, however, is remarkably keen; she understands very clearly the people she has to deal with and her own impulses. She has made her fortune among the conservatives, but it is her lot to lose her heart to a radical politician,

whom

an elderly, unsuccessful diplomat is something of an aris-

she meets in her restaurant. He, Noguchi,

158

Saul Bellow tocrat,

not altogether lacking in charm, but dry, rationalistic, and rigid in A woman of the people, Kazu can be loud on occasion, but

his principles.

she has a good deal of delicacy ly

also.

Noguchi brings her to

visit his

fami-

Kazu is greatly impressed and sadly comforted at the proslying among the upper-class dead when her time comes. Kazu

cemetery.

pect of has glimpsed the fringe of death at the end of that bright material, her life.

Subtly, but

still

Mishima gives us

definitely,

to understand that

it is

not solely Kazu's impulsive heart which dictates this marriage. "Kazu," he says, "naturally sensed the latent strength within her, but she was well

aware at the same time that this strength had been bent and curbed, and would never cast off its shackles and break loose." At the banquet where she and Noguchi meet for the first time, one of the louder and jollier guests is carried off by a stroke, and the shadow of death is not far from Noguchi. This elderly marriage seems, from Noguchi's standpoint, a tranquil settling

But Kazu

is

down

to wait for the end. this. She wants Noguchi to become and she maneuvers him into accepting the nomcity governor. Kazu throws herself into the cam-

not really ready for

active again in politics,

ination of his party for

paign, and lives again. She works so energetically that she almost singlehandedly makes up for Noguchi's dryness and lack of color. Out with the voters, she eats

and

drinks, she dances

and makes speeches. She sings

sentimentally, but also with genuine feeling, over the microphones to

the crowds. Noguchi's funds are limited; Kazu, in secret, spends her

money without honor, he

is

When

stint.

terribly angry.

own

the old diplomat learns of this injury to his

He

even goes so

far as to strike and kick his wife, and this

one of the highest moments

of her

life,

is

for

while she weeps and begs forgiveness, she also enjoys it all passionately. Such dramatic con-

summations make her

But then Nohabitual restraint and attiecstatic.

guchi regains his tude of aristocratic rectitude.

A

scurrilous

pamphlet containing a great many facts about Kazu's past— some of them true— is circulated. About this Noguchi is very decent; he does not mention it. After the election

is

lost— not so

much

be-

cause of Kazu's early sins as because of her

husband's unbending dryness— Noguchi wants his wife to go into retirement with him. But she is not ready to be buried alive, and,

though

it

company while

it

means she

will lie in

in the next life

Yukio Mishima

an obscure grave, Kazu forgoes good

and chooses gaiety and

lasts.

159

activity in this one,

Literature

Another Country by James Baldwin should perhaps be judged as a document and not a novel. It is hard to believe that Baldwin, with

l\

his talents, could himself take ters

ine

have and in the

a fitful reality;

it

seriously as a piece of fiction. Its charac-

on the same page they can be in one phrase genu-

next, false

and

lifeless.

The

style

is

alternately fierce, free,

empty. The scenes of love-making, and they are dramatic in an inferior Lawrentian manner, a kind rhetorical bad, many, are very tides, jungles, and cosmic events rivers, of nature-mysticism of seedy or arty, foolish,

on in the thrill-language of "instinctual fulfillment." It is undoubtedly well-meant and perhaps serves the interests of social progress, but it is very poor stuff, falsely sensitive, made up entirely of phrases, and almost devoid of feeling. Baldwin is genuine and admirlaid

when he expresses rage or indignation, and not when he writes of love and tenderness. In this novel able

at all all

convincing

the important

and they are many, are translated into sex. Truth and honor, and hate, the injustices of American society, the menacing and explosive racial conflicts for which there is no acceptable apology— the situation of the Negro in America is a scandal— all these matters are connected by Baldwin to the sexual theme. Civilized white sexuality is pitilessly denounced and damned. Everything the ordinary white citizen of this country would accept as average and normal, his "square" values, Baldwin angrily tears to shreds. ". All that jazz about the land of the free and the home of the brave," says a Negro woman in Another Country. "Some days, honey, I wish I could turn myself into one big fist and grind this miserable country to powder. Some days, I don't beheve it has a right to exist." ". Wouldn't you hate all white people," she asks elsewhere, "if they kept you in prison here?" She is speaking of the Harlem slums in all their filth, ugliness, and wretchedness. "Kept you here, and stunted you and starved you, and made you watch your mother and father and sister and lover and brother and son and daughter die or go mad or go under, before your very eyes? And not in a hurry, like from one day to the next, but every day, every day, for years, for generations?" The anger is just. As a document, therefore. Another Country questions,

indignation, love

.

.

has great importance, but

it

.

,

does very httle for the progress of the

novel.

George Orwell

in

1940 wrote an essay in praise of Henry Miller

(

Inside

the Whale) in which he noted that a significant change had occurred in

dropped what Orwell called "the Geneva language of the ordinary novel" and was dragging "the realpolitik of the inner mind into the open." In Miller's case, he said, "this is not so much a question of exploring the mechanisms of the mind as owning up to everyday facts and everyday emotions. For the truth is that many ordi-

literature. It had, in Miller,

nary people, perhaps an actual majority, do speak and behave in the that is recorded here. The callow coarseness with which the charac-

way

160

Saul Bellow

Tropic of Cancer talk is very rare in fiction, but it is extremely common in real life; again and again I have heard such conversations from people who were not even aware that they were talking coarsely," ters in

Orwell is quite right about Miller. He brought into literature things that had never been there before. The question for the writer as he advances ever deeper into the formlessness of everyday facts is what he is to do with them, whether he simply wants us to be shocked or has some other purpose. Miller has always been an artist, but those writers

who have learned from him, like Baldwin, have not in every case beheved that to be necessary. Some have felt it obligatory to go shuddering and naked through chaos, or to experience disintegration because disintegration is there. Art, too, must submit to this annihilation.

Many

writers are strongly op-

posed to an

art that

triumphs while in every

mankind suffers. Baldwin must be one of these, for he could very easily write better novels if he believed they served other sphere of

life

moral aims effectively. He is a writer who, for reasons not difficult to appreciate, will not take literature as such seriously. Still, he cannot let it go, either, for he is a writer, and a rather fashionable writer at that. He has a following, largely white and liberal, for which he performs a significant moral, but a dubious artistic, function. As for his morality, both in the novel and in his recent 'New Yorker essay (now published in book form under the title The Fire Next Time), James Baldwin it is fiery but formless. Baldwin believes intenlove sely but with considerable vagueness in and freedom. White America is shocked to find itself so hated, but it is also attracted by angry denunciation, by the exposure of its failures, and in some cases fascinated by the freer and deeper sexuality often attributed to the Negro, Baldwin accepts the popular thesis that moral soundness his

and the capacity for sexual gratffication are connected. In many modem impotence and wickedness go together, and ( in Lawrence's

novels, sexual

Lady Chatterleys Lover,

for instance) the desexualized or instinctually

crippled are the most devoted servants of a heartless industrial civiliza-

Baldwin implicitly relies on these Lawrentian ideas, ultimately traceable to psychoanalysis, and shows the Negro, insulted and disfigured as he has been, truer to his instincts, closer to reality, better and more human tion.

than his white oppressors.

161

Literature

You must put yourself in the skin of a man who is wearing the imiform of his countr)% is a candidate for death in its defense, and who is called a "nigger" by his comrades-in-arms and his oflBcers; who is almost always given the hardest, ugliest, most menial work to do; who knows that the white G. I. has informed the Europeans that he is subhtiman (so much for the American male's sexual security); who does not dance at the U. S. O. the night white soldiers dance there, and does not drink in the same bars white soldiers drink in; and who watches German prisoners of war being treated by Americans with more hviman dignity than he has ever received at their hands. And who, at the same time, as a human being, is far freer in a strange land than he has ever been at home. Home! The very word begins to have a deYou must consider what happens to this he has endured, when he returns—home: search, in his shoes, for a job, for a place to hve; ride, in his skin, on segregated buses; see, with his eyes, the signs saying "White" and "Colored," and especially the signs that say "WTiite Ladies" and "Colored Women"; look into the eyes of his wife; look into the eyes of his son; Hsten, with his ears, to political speeches, North and South; imagine yourself being told to "wait." And all this is happening in the richest and freest country in the world, and in the middle of the twentieth century. spairing and diabolical ring.

citizen, after all

A

Negro

girl,

a prostitute at fourteen,

is

the heroine of Robert Cover's

One Hundred Dollar Misunderstanding. A white college sophomore spends a weekend with her. He represents educated stupidity and the conceited and self-congratulatory boorishness of the white middle class.

The

speaks the language of inno-

girl

cent profanity, the jazzy slang of the brothel.

In her naivete

and

lies

of course she

client.

is

The comedy

a natural understanding, far superior to her

white

of the prostitute has

a

long literary history, and the story of the

whore who bourgeois

or

is

better

puritan

than the respectable also

has

a venerable

But something new has been added in the last decade. Not only has the woman a better and deeper nature than the respectable man, as in Somerset Maugham or Guy de Maupassant, but she is a priestess of Isis, or some other Mediterranean deity, as in Al-

lineage.

berto Moravia's Robert Gover

Woman

of

Rome

or the film

Never on Sunday. Reviewing Cover's book in Esquire, Core Vidal praised the girl, Kitten, as "one of the happiest creations of recent fiction. Businesswoman and child, whore and moralist, she is, although illiterate and 'uneducated,' one of the most telling critics of the American social scene and everything cold, crabbed, inhuman and hysterical in it to appear in many 162

Saul Bellow years."

Once

by the eyes

again, as in so

of innocence,

many American

and

books, ci\ilization

time the emperor

this

is

is

seen

Hterally without

clothes. Neither writers nor the

pubHc, seemingly, ever tire of this exposure of corruption and h\-pocrisy by the natural, the instinctual, the abused but great-hearted innocent. Kitten is, at times, a delightful char-

On

the tele\ision what she really enjoys is the weather forecast; demonic "white man's nonsense," bluster and violence. .Angered by her weekend lover's television watching, she tries to throw the machine out of the window. Mr. Cover, however, lines up matters in a rather tiresomely simple fashion. On the one side he puts the new erotic moralitv' over which the Negro presides— swinging freedom, jazz, instinct; on the other, stand selfishness, prejudice, neiu-otic sexuaht\% the acter.

the rest

is

worship of machinery, the platitudes of half-baked liberalism, and all that is most repulsive in American life. Cover has much in common with Salinger; neither of

them has gone

far

beyond the

attitude of outraged

innocence. Baldwin as a critic of American institutions shows

much more

any of his contemporaries. His demand for social justice is genuine, and, although the ti.vo books he has recently published contain a good deal of fashionable nonsense about sex and rant about history, the depth and fierceness of his polemic against American society- have shocked and frightened many readers, wounded them and roused them by the exposure of hatreds of which they were not aware. There is sickness also in the diagnoses Baldwin offers of our common American ills, but he penetrates more deeply into these than most American writers. maturit}- than

The bourgeois has been pro\ading the comedian with material since he appeared on the stage of world his historic career,

it

is

history-;

often said,

is

he

still

does

so,

even though

ending. In Moliere's Bourgeais

GentiJhomme, he is fresh and ludicrous; in Shaw's Heartbreak House, he is aheady stale. Mr. Mangan's very wealth is a fiction, a joke, and his prudence is the cause of his death. It is not so much the full-fledged bourgeois who is the theme of modem comedy, as the little man— the little man who apes the dignitv' and refinements of the leaders of societ>'. In the nineteenth-centur\^ novel, the subject of the ambitious

man

or

woman,

one generation remo\'ed from the rural laborer or peasant, hke Hardy's Jude or Flaubert's Emma Bovary, the obsciu"e provincial whose head is turned by bad books and dreams of romantic delicacy and erotic happiness, is treated with high and even tiagic seriousness. Shaw tieats it later in a mixed manner in Pygmalion, where the poor Doolittle girl, taken from the dust heap by the Professor and taught to speak like a woman of the upper classes, also acquires a new spirit and is capable of feeling and suffering in a different fashion. The common man, like Hardy's Jude, who falls in love with learning and religion, civilization, and all the higher forms of thought and feeling, discovers, after an ambitious and 163

Literature

heartbreaking struggle, only the snobbery of the learned, the hollowness of beliefs, and a moribund civilization. He is rewarded for his efforts by the pain of insight and an agony of spirit. The comedian of the twentieth century has made much of the private, shabby person who plays the gentleman. Joyce's Leopold Bloom in Ulysses

is

one such figure—"How grand

the type Clair's

A

we

are this morning!" In the movies

represented by Charlie Chaplin and by the clochard of Rene Noiis La Liberie who becomes a bourgeois tycoon, but finds it

is

much and hits the road again. Artists and poets themselves have enjoyed playing the role of the respectable person, disguising themselves as bank clerks or insurance executives, making subversive fun of the romantic conception of the artistic personality as well as of the petty individualist of common origins and gentlemanly pretensions. An appearall

too

ance of "dignity" is still good for a laugh, as James Donleavy has recently proven in The Ginger Man. Sebastian Dangerfield, who is allegedly studying law in Dublin, is continually on his dignity, patronizes shopkeepers and the "peasantry," but is a very funny scoundrel and unscrupulous sensualist. Private life, inner life, worthy and even laudable sensibility—these too have become the materials of comedy now. More than a century ago, Stendhal was already becoming bored with the first person singular

and complained that

tinually.

The

it

was very

trying to

be writing

"I" con-

exploration of consciousness, introspection, self-knowledge,

and hypochondria, so solemnly conducted in twentieth-century literature, in books like The Confessions of Zeno by Italo Svevo, treated ironically and humorously. The inner life, the "unhappy consciousness," the management of personal life, "alienation"— all the sad questions for which the late romantic writer reserved a special tone of disappointment and bitterness are turned inside-out by the modern comedian. Deeply subjective is,

self-concern ness, is

my

easily

is

ridiculed.

My feelings, my

progress,

my

made

laugh at

to

makes such forms

sensitivity, all

my

early traumas,

fidelity,

my

my

guilt— the

moral serious-

modern reader

of these. Perhaps the population explosion

of self-concern

seem funny. Perhaps the political and between practice and doc-

scientific revolutions, the wars, the difference

trine in all

modern

planations

are

countries, the failures of religion, et cetera— the ex-

many,

endless— have

made

the

prevailing

forms

of

individualism obsolete.

To guide us in our observations, a comparison between Thomas Mann's Death in Venice- and Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita may be useful. Both are stories of older men who fall in love with someone much younger. The parallel is really very close. Humbert Humbert is Gustave von Aschenbach in his comic form. In Nabokov, the Nietzschean, Freudian theme is mocked. Humbert is not impressed by sickness, nor does he associate it with genius; perversity is a concept from the whiskered 2 See pp. 395-440 below.

164

Saul Bellow past with

its

notions of normalcy.

Nor does he show much

the theme of Apollo-Hyacinthus, which

Mann

interest in

develops with such earn-

world destiny do not move him in the good old grave love without classical allusions, and murders his rival in a grotesque parody of the jealous lover. Quilty, the rival, will not hold still and die becomingly, but makes fun of himself and of his murderer and of the grand passion— of the value of life. Wright Morris' What a Way to Go explicitly develops the Death in Venice theme as comedy. It is doubtful that Nabokov was thinking of Mann's novella, but Mr. Morris' American professors are in Venice, discuss von Aschenbach in a comic setting, and give Mann's name to a cat. The comic hero of Mr. Morris' novel is Soby, a professor of ripe years, who finds his erotic destiny in a college girl during a Mediterranean tour. Miss Throop, a estness. Questions of

Germanic

style.

He

falls in

friendly old dragon, a large, frowsy, thoughtful, eccentric

woman

of a

certain erudition, says to Soby, "Getting back to the Greeks has

its

but don't offend the gods by ignoring your luck. On the Orphic side, which is mine, the beloved is both named and nameless, a charming Oberlin freshman, a Nausicaa by the sea, a Lolita selecting a new popsicle. /m-persons, rather than persons— if hazards, doesn't

it?

.

.

.

you know what I mean. We have no name for what is fish below the thighs. Could that be why it is the lasting personality?" Mr. Morris is one

of

our

best

writers,

keen,

charming,

thoughtful, witty, but too fond, perhaps, of obliquity. Soby marries his Nausicaa, so much younger than himself, and takes his chances. The gods are not satisfied with prudence and demand that a man abandon such bourgeois

considerations as differences in years or the

middle-aged desire for serenity and comfort. In "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," T. S. Eliot described another Soby whose life had been measured out with coffee spoons, the

poor, aging, fussy creature, indecisive, losing his soul in paltriness, the civilized

Wright Morris

personaUty

estranged from instinct. Prufrock will hear the mermaids singing as he walks by the sea, but observes with great sadness, "I

do not think that they

no chance

of

any such

fate,

will sing to me." Professor

belief that the only lasting personality

mystery. The melancholy comedy and, since the point of view of

a pity that the book

is

common

must be sought becomes gayer

of Eliot

What

a

Way

not better. Morris

Silone that most writers think

than of the

reader.

Soby takes

bravely making the Orphic choice in the

more

He

is

is

to

Go

open

is

in instinct

so interesting,

to the charge

of the critics

and

it is

made by

their colleagues

guilty of professionalism.

165

and

in Morris' book,

Literature

Pale Fire disappointed a public which was waiting for another Lolita, and found when they opened the book, instead of the tlirilhng confessions of a cultivated European gent who falls in love witli

Nabokov's

an American nymphet, a long and formidable poem in heroic couplets of nine hundred and ninety-nine lines. One suspects tliat Mr. Nabokov took pleasure in dashing these expectations, for he is an artist, not a producer of shockers for the great public. Pale Fire is written as an explication de texte.

The notes on the poem

tell

the story

DeCommunist revolution he escapes to America. The Queen, a woman little to his taste (but then he does not have what of the King of an imaginary country.

tlironed

by

Americans

a

\\'ould

call

a

normal or healthy

would like to Riviera, he declines the but him on keep going to answered he would be "He to stay. America some time next month and business interest in the opposite sex),

Vladimir Nabokov

in Paris

tomorrow."

"Why America? What would he do

there?"

"Teach. Examine literary masterpieces with brilliant and charming

young people. The King is ster

he could now freely indulge." He would be something of a mongreat charm—his vegetarianism, the cap he wears at looks, the thick beard, and the refinement of his judg-

A hobby a

but for his

night, his florid

marvelous creation.

ments, his resigned but graceful acceptance of the facts of the modern He comes to give the American poet. Shade, a royal theme, and

world.

lives for the

poem, hovering over Shade, trying

to lead

and

instruct him.

How firmly, how stupidly I believed that Shade was composing have been a poem, a kind of romaunt, about the King of Zembla. prepared for the horrible disappointment in store for me. Oh, I did not expect him to devote himself completely to that theme! It might .

.

.

We

have been blended of course with some of his own life stuff and sundry Americana— but I was sure his poem would contain the wonderful incidents I had described to him, the characters I had made alive for him and all the unique atmosphere of my kingdom. I even suggested to him a good title— the title of the book in me whose pages he was to cut: Solus Rex. ... I started to read the poem. I read faster and faster. I sped through it, snarling, as a furious young heir through an old deceiver's testament. Where were the battlements of my sunset castle? .... Instead of the wild glorious romance— what did I have? An auto-

biographical, eminentK' Appalachian, rather old-fashioned narrative in a neo-Popian prosodic st\le— beautifulK- written of course— Shade could

not write otherwise than beautifully— but void of special rich sti-eak of magical madness. .

166

.

.

my

magic, of that

"

Saul Bellow

These sentences are from the conclusion of the book; by the time we read them poor Shade has become nothing but a shade. An assassin aiming at the King has killed the unfortunate poet, and the King has made off with the manuscript. He recovers from the shock of his first reading. On calmer study he finds the poem to have a dim color and vestiges of music which are inspired by him, and the explication de texte does indeed have the rich streak of magical madness missing from Shade's lines. What in the modern world but art and literature can a King

him? Mr. Nabokov seems to

find to interest

Stern, by Bruce

Jay Friedman,

is

comedy

a

ask.

of a different variety, less

and subtle. Stern has a house in suburbia he does not really want, a job he cannot bear, a wife who grieves him, hostile dogs who lie in wait and snatch his wrist in their teeth when he passes. Stern is a burlap hero, a little man who is humble because he has so much to be humble about, a schlemiel, ineffectually doing his conscientious best, until his burning and repressed emotions find expression in a stomach ulcer. The lower end of Long Island, trampled flat by its intricate

millions of inhabitants,

is

the scene of his

trials.

Slovenly, innocent, well-

intentioned Stern, a born victim and patsy, is

He

losing his battle with his neighbors.

tries to

open

his heart to his friend, the

Negro

painter Battleby, but Battleby seems not to

hear him.

He

replies,

fixion oils I'd love for

"I've got

you

with a powerful religious quality.

how

I

"No,

was able I

mean

to someone.

to

it,"

some

cruci-

to see. Real giants I

don't see

come up with them." Stem said. "I have to

talk

." .

.

Battleby avoids answering, but as clumsy, heedless Stern pours out his soul, he finally tells

him, "You've got to abstract yourself so

that

you present a

The

faceless picture to society."

sufferer does not

know what

to

of this. "Stern, puzzled, but afraid that

make if

he

asked for elaboration, Battleby would find

him anti-Negro,

said, 'All right. I'm going to Bruce Jay Friedman doing that thing right away.' No less neurotic and confused are the rich passengers of Joseph Bennett's Luxury Cruise setting forth from 57th Street in New York on the Olympic "loaded with champagne and wines, caviar, pheasants, terrapin and other rare foods. Arrangements had been made to replenish the larder start

at the

Mediterranean ports; so the ship would be a floating storehouse on the long trip through the undependable regions east

of delicacies

167

(f

Literature of Suez." This

is

luxury in the imperial style as described by Suetonius, A Deck costs $14,230 per

and Gibbon. An outside stateroom on

Tacitus,

The passengers, representing old money and new money. Wall LaSalle Street in Chicago, Texas oil, and California fortunes, are very successfully drawn by Mr. Bennett. The rich at play—preposterous, horrible— offer a large target to the satirist. Mrs. W. W. Holahan

person. Street,

of Santa Barbara, California, for instance,

described as being "enor-

is

mously prominent in green. Green shoes, green satin heels, a fur coat you could measure by the quart for thickness, richness, lushness, great plumed hat or cap drooping with green velvet. And that face— the square determined jaw, staring eyes heavy-lidded, hair fading from blond, big nose. The fingers bulged with jewels, big and hard, beneath the gloves of greenish kid with traces of powder on them." An aristocratic Eastern lady whose husband is not prospering imagines that a Texas oil tycoon who stumbled drunkenly into her cabin has assaulted her. The degenerate Italian husband of an American heiress steals Mrs. Holahan's emeralds and drops them overboard—de gaite de coeur. A yachtsman whose hobby is

who

navigation has a wife

Another

satire,

diverts herself with a

more widely acclaimed,

jL\. Grass. Little Oskar in early childhood

how

is its

is

member

of the crew.

The Tin Drum, by

Giinter

central figure. Oskar, a born artist, seeing

nasty and corrupt

life

was, and

how

lustful,

him were, decided that he would and contrived to remain a little child. In size, therefore, but not in experience and intelligence, he is still tiny Oskar who has clung to the toy drum and who has seen the rise of Hitler and the collapse of Germany from the special perspective of the timeworn child. Of all the child heroes considered so far, he is easily the least innocent. He almost fulfills the chilling prophecy of Hesiod that one day, in the old age of the race, infants would be born with gray heads and that it would then be time to seek a new beginning. The wrinkled and careworn little boy of Jude the Obscure anticipates this development. Mr. Updike's five-year-old prodigy of The Centaur, little wisehead, is another stooped greedy, and vicious the adults about

grow no

larger

small figure of precocity. tions

of age,

writers,

Tiresias all

the

The blending

and even with

and they love

its

of childishness with the percep-

disabilities,

fascinates

is an intriguing figure and exposes sharply and energetically muddleheaded Danzig Thebans about him— the adulterers, the

wurst-eating bourgeoisie, the brown-shirt idiots in

and

many modern

to introduce Tiresias in a sunsuit. Little Oskar-

cruelty. It

would almost seem

as

if

all

their grossness

the ancient lowly, the slaves,

peasants, and plebeians, have turned at the

end of two millennia into a Mr. Grass had an interesting subject here, but the point of view of the dwarf is too special and limited for the burden imposed on it. Grass's comedy is ambitious; what he wants is

huge mass

of small despots.

168

Saul Bellow

nothing

less

history in it all,

than to chronicle the whole of modern

The Tin Drum. His

and the fun wears

little

hero

thin, for the

is

German and European

unnecessarily long in telling

katzenjammers are endless and

a prolonged reminiscence of schoolboy pranks by a host his sleepy dinner guests

A

who

like

will not let

go home. but more readable book

is The Hard Life by Flann O'Brien, a witty, reminiscent novel which tells of the raising of two young boys by a garrulous old Dubliner who loves the bottle. The Hard Life is quite unpretentious, and Mr. O'Brien himself, in his dedication to Graham Greene "whose own forms of gloom I admire," calls it a "misterpiece." We are thus put at once on notice that the writer has no intention of grappling with the demons and that, except inadvertently, no subject of world significance will be discussed. We are notified, moreover, that all the persons in the book are real, not fictitious.

And

slighter, less ambitious,

the master-spirit of Pascal

Pensees: "Tout

le

trouble

is

du monde

invoked in an epigraph from the quon ne sait pas rester

vient de ce

seul dans sa chamhre."^ If Mr. Collopy, the guardian of the

two

boys,

had

only stayed in his room with his good whiskey, his vague humanitarian

aim of improving the lot of women, and his gossiping Jesuit friend, all would have been well with him. But he went out to meetings in a rainy season (he loved to heckle speakers), and the drenchings aggravated his rheumatism. The crock did not cure him.

He

took large doses of the

Gravid Water prescribed by Manus, the elder of the two boys, and swollen, irreversibly. He went to Rome on a pilgrimage to cure his dropsical weight, broke the springs of carriages en route, and finally lost his life at a violin concert in a small hall when the landing of a

became

staircase

gave under his weight.

in America has returned after an absence of many years. It was not merely the dull solemnity of the Eisenhower era, its fatty piety and the lack of wit in high places, that discouraged it. The present

Comedy

administration, though

it

likes

wit better, does not give us

much

to laugh

The dignity of the citizen of a democracy has been humorlessly insisted upon by minorities who were in their powerless days the subject about.

Finn is a and that the runaway slave, Jim, is a great character. He is called Nigger Jim, and for this reason organized Negro opinion is for burying the book. Other minorities in their struggle for equality have behaved no better, and the effect has been a bogus rhetorical "respect." The touchiof rude unfeeling satire. It does not matter that Huckleberry classic

ness or hypersensitivity of various classes that develops in the course of their social ascent unfortunately results in pompousness, hypocrisy,

tyranny.

We

begin to understand what

this

may mean when we

3 "All the unhappiness of men arises from one single quietly in their own chamber" (Vol. 33, p. 196b).

169

fact,

and hear

that they cannot stay

"

Literature

Premier Khrushchev cry out that the younger generation of poets and painters in the Soviet Union "eat the bread of the people" and repay them with "horrible rot and dirty daubs." This is what comes of the policy that art must serve the political and social aims of any regime or class directly. Every despot, George Bernard Shaw once wrote in his airy way,

keep him sane. He, the comedian, was whose dangerous duty it was to remind the despot of the truth. It is somewhat old-fashioned to assume that the truth will always be clear enough to make the aim of the comedian plain to everyone. The severity of the tyrant who is obviously mad and who murders or imprisons millions of people makes the truth most painfully, horribly clear. Luckily, we have had nothing so terrible to cope with; our own

must have a

disloyal subject to

that disloyal subject

forms of tyranny are incomparably milder. But we ought not to spend too much time in self-congratulation. We have problems enough of our own. For reasons that seem peculiarly American, pretensions of many kinds have to be taken very seriously. Faced with people who in another context might be figures of satire or caricature, the writer has felt obliged to clear his throat respectfully and to address them as Mr. Boor,

Honorable Mr. Idiot. As a shrewd critic, Mr. Harold Rosenberg, has observed on this subject, the writer "loves his neighbors too much, in being so disturbed at their weaknesses." That is to say, he approaches them all with the earnestness they are theoretically entitled to. And, either from lack of courage or lack of candor, or because he does not trust his instincts, or has failed to develop his understanding, he brings a great deal of solemnity to intrinsically comic themes. "With a little less or the

love and solidarity on the part of their scribes, the braves of

Long

might have supplied some living grotesques as solid as those of Dickens or Gogol," writes Rosenberg. "Fitzgerald and Faulkner, however, hesitate to throw to the dogs of comedy these citizens upon whom they depend for Values.' This situation is gradually changing. The comedian is not more willing to attack power at its source, but he has begun to exploit comically the romantic theme of the precious, unique self. Romantic sensibihty has always had satirists to mock it. Thomas Love Peacock was one of the first. Dostoevsky made marvelous fun of the exquisite romantic personality in a novel like The Possessed. But on the whole, the modern movement in literature represents a victory for wretchedness, and even in the recent "absurd" plays and novels there is still more metaphysical despair than laughter. However, a small handful of writers, among them the best talents of the present generation, have oflFered us, in comedy, our only relief from the long-prevalent mood of pessimism, discouragement, and Island's

North Shore or of Mississippi county

seats

low-seriousness (the degenerate effect of the ambition for high-seriousness). Let us hope that, superfluity and solemn nonsense having been

laughed and hooted away by the comic

170

spirit,

we may

see the return of

Saul Bellow

what we may ultimately decide on the basis of existential metaphysics, modern psychology, Marxism, or symbolic logic about the meaning of an individual life, it is only proper and sensible to remember that there are now more individual lives than ever, and that certain revolutions in production a genuine moral seriousness in literature. Regardless of

have made these

power

lives

possible.

Free public education has given the

and a new understanding

of expression

(in that order)

to the

grandsons and granddaughters of laboring illiterates. It has made them able to deplore their civilized condition. A mighty and universal spirit is uttering its first words, releasing what was perhaps to have been expected— the cry that the world is an oppressor, and that existence is absurd. In this situation, the comic spirit is also

of grievance, long in abeyance,

the spirit of reason opposing the popular orgy of wretchedness in

modem

literature.

Vasco Pratolini

explains in a note to the reader of

book is a memoir, not a fantasy. "It the author and his dead brother. The author, his

writing

in

more. late,

He

sought

it,

Two

Brothers, that

a conversation between

nothing

and too brother's nature. These pages

regrets that

divined his

consolation,

he but

is

faintly,

are offered in sterile expiation."

Two

Brothers

is

a short book, and

its

brev-

powerful emotions. Love

ity is the effect of

and death color every word and every detail, and one senses that there were many things left unsaid because they did not meet the strict test of necessity. The two brothers are orphaned by the death of their mother. The younger, Feruccio, is adopted by a whitehaired couple, the major-domo of a Florentine villa and his wife. The older brother is occasionally brought by his grandmother into the domain of privilege to visit the lucky Feruccio,

who sometimes behaves with ostentatious superiority. He is a beautiful child, spoiled by

his foster parents.

during adolescence. older brother,

now

And

brothers rarely meet

Vasco Pratolini

then one day the

a student and poorly dressed, unkempt, in a ragged

coat, catches sight of

To

The

Feruccio

among more prosperous

high-school boys.

spare Feruccio embarrassment, he denies being his brother and hides

himself, but Feruccio's feeling for

has no

him

is

strong.

wish to conceal his lower-class origins. 171

He

is

not a snob and

Literature

Presently the privileged position of Feruccio comes to an end—he is forced into the world, ill-prepared, to make his way. He runs errands, cleans furnaces, shovels snow. "Your eyes

were opened

to

this

new

prepare you for

it. and there was nothing in your former meaningless a destined to be Now I know that you were defenseless, sacrifice in a world where even the lamb must fight ferociously to defend its innocence." The younger brother too is now one of the poor, and not having been educated in the realities of poverty, makes bad mistakes. His marriage is disastrous, and bad marriages, says Pratolini, are fatal in such circumstances. "True love belongs to the poor. When a man and wife are poor, they must make their souls as one, if they are to endure and give each other courage. To love is to give each other courage. Only then does [a man] fully appreciate the meaning of his presence ." on earth. In the last year of the war Feruccio sickens, goes to Rome for help, is improperly treated in the hospital, and wastes away, the love between the brothers increasing, their intimacy deepening with the progress of the disease. Feruccio cries out, "I don't want to die." But he is dying. June comes, the Germans are in the streets, the wards of the hospital are crowded, beyond the walls the trees are green, the flies buzz about the dying Feruccio's bed. And that is the novel. Brief, modest, and memorable, it circumvents the theoretical perplexities which, as we have seen,

life to

reality, .

.

.

.

.

beset so

.

.

.

many

writers,

leaving

whether the dying Feruccio and "anonymous forces."

it

to historians

of

culture to

decide

his grieving brother are individuals or

own reasons for persisting in the examination of the reality of individualism. Professor Wylie Sypher argues in Loss of the Self in Modern Literature and Art, citing many authorities

Still, theoreticians have their

and

poems, and novels, that "the era of individualism yields of total groupism. And how can humanism survive in an age of total groupism? This is a crisis the humanist has not to

plays,

the

era

previously faced. anti-literature

No wonder

and

anti-art

the

humanism

persists

only

that persists,

residual

in

if

it

does, in

form." Professor

Sypher describes a new sort of "anonymous humanism" which takes into account the failures of the romantic belief in freedom, sees that liberalism,

which

tried to give this

behef a practical, institutional expression, aware of the swamping or "minimizing of the self by the law of larger numbers." Loss of Self is a book of great interest. It suffers, however, from two characteristic defects of modern criticism. has failed, and

First,

it

is

treats all the

products of the tendency

seriousness, regardless of their quality.

are extremely poor, but

have spoken

at length

all is grist

Some

that

it

examines with equal

are good, even great, others

comes

to the historian's mill. "I

about some writers and painters

172

I

do not greatly

Saul Bellow

but find highly illustrative." But bad books and good books cannot support the same argument without distinction. Art and bungling must

like

show us quite

different things,

even

in a literature that originates in a

theory of the Absurd. Secondly, Professor Sypher shares the fault of critics

He

when

apparently takes

poem

common

they discuss the relation between art and ideas. it

for granted that

same

or a play, or that the

an idea simply gives birth to a them both. "As every-

Zeitgeist produces

body has noted," he writes, "Descartes cleft apart the realm of man's experience: there was the res extensa— the realm of matter, operating by universal mathematical laws— and the res cogitans— the world inside, which by contrast with the actuality and regularity of the physical system outside, seemed unreal." Romantics, he explains, defend the self against is my idea of the world." This an interesting account of the development of romanticism and unquestionably has some bearing on what has happened, but, in making

the res extensa, "asserting that the world is

such a tidy packet of art and intellectual history, Sypher subordinates imagination to thought, deriving the one directly from the other. Of course it is

true that

opment

many modern

of thought

cepting the account of tion of their art.

writers consciously participate in the devel-

and enter

into the current of intellectual history, ac-

given by

life

its

commanding

Such writers take what

is

figures as the condi-

given by Existentialism or

Psychoanalysis, by Physics or Logic, as they understand these subjects, to

be somehow

irreversible.

Once Descartes had

about the res extensa and the res cogitans

uttered those fatal words

see Meditations, Vol. 31, pp.

(

96b-103d), man's course was presumably set unchangeably.

And

Hegel,

Marx, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Husserl, Einstein, Schrodinger, Heisenand others made further disclosures which evidently determined

berg,

Mann, Musil, Camus, There was no getting away from it, it seems. A concise summary of this attitude is offered by Professor Erich Heller in his study of Thomas Mann. Describing the conversation between the Devil and Adrian Leverkiihn in Mann's Doctor Faustus, Heller writes, "For four hundred years" (according to the Devil) "all great music rested on the assumption that there could be harmony and peace between a universally established convention and the subjective concerns of the individual, that 'soul' and 'order' were profoundly at one, and that it was therefore possible for the human passions truly and freely to express themselves within prescribed formulae. But this 'play' is over, the 'law' no longer recognizes itself in the 'mirror' of human inwardness, and the human heart refuses to be persuaded that there is an 'universal order of ." Apparently we must not things' with which it can live at peace. the form of the novel for such writers as Gide, Sartre, Beckett.

.

.

expect to thrive without guarantees of safety or perfect metaphysical

Here it is assumed that the world is now radically different from what it was, that knowledge and civilization have put the human stability.

173

Literature

unbearable anxiety by overturning its ancient damaged. These certainties, and that art and Hfe have been irrecoverably bourgeois possibly of expectations on based are dubious assumptions

new

heart in a

state of

origin-a universal insurance policy which covers the soul. The absence of any such insurance produces the condition of "absurdity." Professor Sypher, though he hopes for the appearance of a sturdier humanism, expects that it will have to square itself with "the absurd."

Lionel Abel, Mr. arguments

in his

Metatheatre, does terrible

for "absurdity" in his essay

Theatre of the Absurd.

"And has

it

become

particular

kind

we And

world

"Is the

so recently? of

damage

on Martin

to the

Esslin's

live in 'absurd'?" asks

The

Mr. Abel.

does our world, newly absurd,

theatrical

art

expressing

'absurdity'?"

require

a

"Esslin,"

he continues, "says that our present sense of absurdity springs

from the

loss of

humanly important

realities.

Of what realities? Well, know when this occurred.

we have lost God. I should like to But Esslin probably means that we have lost a belief in God once natural to us. Now I confess to having very little nostalgia for those periods in history when it was 'natural' to believe in God. Was such belief ever really Esslin thinks

natural? S0ren Kierkegaard, for one, thought that Christian education,

century— this kind of education

'natural' in the nineteenth

we have

lost—

was the main obstacle to Christian belief; for Kierkegaard, true belief was always possible, always miraculous." Abel passes then to the examination of other arguments for absurdity, the most prominent of which the loss of "our formerly felt intimacy with the world." Esslin cites Camus's Myth of Sisyphus on the passing of a trusted, "reasonable" world, on the divorce between "man and his life, the actor and his setting" which leaves us with the feeling of absurdity. Camus, Mr. Abel replies, "wants the world to be familiar; Aristotle thought it should excite wonder." He adds, "To say that reason is gone is to speak without any hope of being understood. An absurd world would be silent; it would not be plied with plays." And finally, "The world can no more become absurd than it can sin, starve, or fall down. There are many absurdities in the world; most of them were always there." Mr. Abel has a twofold purpose, he tells us in the preface to his bril-

is

liant little book.

He

tries to

explain

altogether impossible, for the

why

modern

"tragedy

dramatist,"

is

so diflBcult,

and

if

not

"to suggest the

nature of a comparably philosophic form of drama." He is a serious, learned, but also witty and succinct writer. Tragedy, Mr. Abel argues, requires a protagonist who lives through tragic destruction brought on

by

hubris,

and "becomes

daemon." Oedipus is destroyed by his is pledged to punish. But in Oedipus at Colonus, he is revealed as a daemon. "Two cities want his body when he dies," for the greatest of suflFerers can confer blessings. In divine, a

discovery that he himself

is

the murderer he

174

Saul Bellow his discussion of Shakespeare,

Mr. Abel takes the view that Shakespeare's

tragedies are imperfect, and that only

Macbeth meets the

definition of a

true tragedy. Another term must be found to describe the other masterpieces of Shakespeare.

Tragedy requires the existence

of an ideal

world. "Very probably there must be something ideal about the struc-

world in which tragedy is and this, in the sixteenth century, was not to be found. But Western civilization has created another dramatic form insuflBciently understood by those who are so busy ture

the

of

possible,"

bewailing the impossibility of tragedy in the modern world, and that form is metatheatre. It is

already plainly present in Hamlet and

The Tempest and in the plays and Cervantes. In metatheatre, as

"already

theatricalized";

of

Calderon

life

is

the events

seen are

"found by the playwright's imagining rather than by his observing the world." "Hegel thought that after Hamlet, all modern trage-

would be tragedies

dies

of the intellectual. I

think he should have said tragedy

would be

replaced by metatheatre." In metatheatre the

Lionel Abel

world seems an emanation from human consciousness. "Tragedy," says Mr. Abel, "makes human existence more vivid by showing its vulnerabiHty to fate. Metatheatre makes human existence more dreamlike by showing that fate can be overcome. There is no such thing as humanistic tragedy. There is no such thing as religious metatheatre." It is impossible, in an attempted summary, to do justice to the scope and spirit of Mr. Abel's argument. He himself, however, does state it as his main assumption that his studies of dramatic forms "all imply that dramatic forms are related to and take their life from values which are important outside of drama. I am not a formaHst. Formalists, I think, are too interested in form as such to really understand it." Elsewhere, however, he says, "Metatheatre glorifies the unwillingness .

of the imagination to regard

seems to hold that the itself to

any given

any image of the world

literary imagination

set of values

.

.

as ultimate." This

does not consent to bind

which are important outside

of drama.

The New Theatre of Europe, a recent anthology, two particularly significant plays, Robert Bolt's A Man for All Seasons and Corruption in the Palace of Justice by the late Ugo Betti. Mr. Corrigan has also provided introductory essays by the playwrights themselves, and these are of the greatest value. Both address themselves to the same question, inescapable for the writer— what is it that defines

Robert ^

Corrigan's

contains

175

Literature a man? What is he? What am I? Mr. Bolt says, "We no longer have, as past societies have had, any picture of individual Man (Stoic Philosopher, Christian Religious, Rational Gentleman) by which to recognize ourselves and against

which to measure ourselves; we are anything. But

it is not everyone who can live with that, though it is our true present position." For that reason we attempt to derive an image of ourselves from the society about us. "But society can only have as much idea as we have what we

if

anything, then nothing, and

are about, for

it

has only our brains to think

was with such thoughts, says Mr. Bolt, that he approached the writing of his play about Sir Thomas More. "Thomas More became for me a man with an adamantine sense of his own self. He knew where he began and left off, what area of himself with." It

.

.

.

he could yield to the encroachments of his enemies, and what to the encroachments of But at length he was those he loved. asked to retreat from that final area where he located his self. And there this supple, humorous, unassuming, and sophisticated perand could no more son set like metal cliff." That this is not budged than a be merely an idle or entirely theoretical problem anyone who has recently read the ac.

.

.

.

a scene fbom "a

man for all

seasons"

Emlyn Willunns Sir Thomas More;

Left,

as right,

George Rose as

Common Man

count

the

of

Arendt

.

.

Eichmann trial by Hannah The individual is con-

will realize.

sumed by

his social or political activities un-

which powers. Mr. Bolt wonders whether any genuine sense less

he

contains his identity

finds the final area

without "something transcendental."

If

that

ture, he says, "for we are rightly committed paramount gift our thinkers, artists, and for

ence, should labor to get for us

is

is

so

and

of self

we have

his is

moral

possible

a barren fu-

to the rational. I think the all I

know, our men of

sci-

a sense of selfhood without resort to

magic."

Ugo

Betti's essay, Religion

and the Theatre,

is

an attack on what passes

modern art, on the indolence of the Christian virtues modern form, on the self-indulgent tears, soft humanitarianism,

for Christianity in in their

and optimism of complacent consciences. A genuine religious art, in view, must begin by admitting the worst. A man who believes in God, or says or thinks that he does, may comfort himself with his faith. "Happy are they who are calm, sure, strong, and no longer need anything, or at least think they don't. But how can we avoid thinking, also, of those who are weak, without faith, and without hope?" These, the Betti's

176

Saul Belloic

weak and

despairing,

must be shown, by the rehgious

God

they do belong to a world in which

play-vvright, that

can do," says

Betti,

clumsily to prove again certain things to someone, starting from

"is try

zero. I belie\'e, truly belie\e, that all

exists. "All I

human

abdications

'no's/ a small yes'

we

which

we

if

search untiringly at the bottom of

end by

will always

will

outweigh

finding,

ever)' objection

to rebuild e\-er}-thing." \\'hat Betti asserts

is

that

we

under and be

so

many

suflBcient

cannot live without

no matter what we may tell ourselves. The soul cannot breathe without it. The most disfigured, hardened, and justice,

cynically embittered

own metaphor, again. Betti

men

crave

in Betti's

it,

be clean and the "absurdists" seem to inas the leper craves to

many

habit

different

galaxies,

apart.

He would

probably be considered old

hght-years

hat by a novehst like Nathalie Sarraute

who

away from the inauthenticity of the "individual." The odd thing is, however, that

has gotten

despite the old-fashioned ring of the state-

ment by

Betti,

derstand what

Modem

most people probably do unit

means.

writers on the

whole have given up

the theme of justice. Indeed they rarely deal

with

any

social

questions.

Ever\'

year,

in

America, a large number of "informationar novels are published. These take you "inside"

Robert Bolt

Madison Avenue or "inside" the U.S. Senate and tell you how things are done. But they are not genuine social novels. They do not try to examine or explain business or political power. Books like Mr. Bennett's Luxury Cruise describe the manners of the rich; manners, not money, is their theme. In a society built on specialization, novelists too are specialists. They may specialize in "facts" like Mr. O'Hara, or in "culture" like Mr. Updike. The drift of such "facts" and such "culture" is growing constantly clearer. Literature in the United States is becoming more professional, less generally meaningful. The injustices that stir writers most deeply are those done to sensibilit}\ There is no broader idea of justice. American novelists are not ungenerous, far from it, but as their view of society is fairly shallow, their moral indignation is nonspecific. What seems to be lacking is a firm sense of a common world, a coherent community, a genuine purpose in life. No one can will these things into being and establish them by fiat. That has been tried often enough, and the results of such efforts have ver}^ properly been met with skepticism. The supernatural, the transcendental have not been rejected or "debunked" by the modern consciousness only to be replaced by the inventions of wTiters. The Silones and the Bettis are rare exceptions. It 177

Literature requires a certain daring to assert as Betti does that the

hungers for

justice.

This

be unsure of themselves and

to

human

soul

not a fashionable thing to say. Writers tend

is

to accept the verdicts of the learned, the

tell us that certain values are gone from this world. "The good," said William Blake, "are attracted by men's perceptions/And think not for themselves."

Erich Heller \\ho

historicists like

fore\-er

BIBLIOGRAPHY Abel, Lioxel, Metatheafre: A New View of Dramatic Form. New York: Hill &

Wang.

Grass, Glxter, The Tin Drum, trans, by

New

Erich, Thomas Mann: The German. Cleveland: The World Publishing Companv, 1961.

Heller,

York: Dial Press, Inc., 1962.

Ironic

New

The Fire Next Time.

York;

Dial Press. Inc.. 1963.

Betti, Ugo, Corruption

New

Xew

The

MiSHiMA, YuKio, After the Banquet, trans, by Donald Keene. New York: Alfred

Theatre of Europe.

A. Knopf, Inc., 1963.

Companv, Morris, Wright,

1962. ,

New

and the Theatre,

Religion

Theatre

Dell Publishing

Bolt, Robert,

The York:

New

of

New

The

York:

A Man

Europe.

Theatre

of

(ed.).

Europe.

Publishing Companv,

New

The

New

York:

Dell

New

Go\-ER.

Robert,

Misunderstanding. Press,

Inc..

New

York:

Life.

Inc.,

New

1962.

The Cape Cod Lighter. Random House, Inc., 1962.

Two

bv Barbara Kennedv.

Brothers,

New

trans,

York: Orion

Press, Inc., 1962.

Roth,

Philip,

Letting

Random House,

York:

1962.

One Hundred

New

F., Morte D'Urhan. New York: J. Doubledav & Companv, Inc., 1962.

Berklev Publishing Compan\".

Inc..

York:

Pratolixi, \"asco.

New

Fire.

Po^^-ERs,

1962.

Stern.

Go.

O'H-ARA, John,

DoxLEAvy, J.AMES Patrick, The Ginger Man. New York: Medallion Books,

Friedmax, Bruce Jay, Simon and Schuster.

Pale

Pantheon Books,

York:

Publishing Company, 1962.

Robert

\'L.ADiMm,

Way To

a

Publishers, 1962.

Flaxx, The Hard

O'Briex,

New

Burroughs, Willlani S., Naked Lunch. New York: Grove Press. Inc.. 1962. CoRRiGAX.

What

Atheneum

York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, Inc., 1962.

for All Seasons, in

of

York:

Nabokov,

Company, 1962.

Theatre

DeU

in

New

Europe.

New

Line.

York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1962.

the Palace of

in

Dell Publishing

York:

Red

JoxES, James, The Thin

Bexxett, Joseph, Luxury Cruise. New York: George Braziller, Inc., 1962.

Justice, in

York: Pantheon

Books, Inc., 1963.

BALD^^-I^, James, Another Country.

,

New

Ralph Manheim.

1963.

Inc.,

Salixger,

J.

D.,

Dollar

Beam,

Grove

Introduction.

178

Go.

New

York:

1962.

High the Roof and Seymour, An

Raise

Carpenters

Boston:

Company, 1963.

1962.

Inc.,

Little,

Brown &

Saul Bellow SiLONE, Ignazio, Bread and Wine, trans,

Sypher, F. Wylie, Loss of the Self in

by Harvey Fergusson II. New York: Atheneum Publishers, 1962.

Modern

and

Stories.

York:

in

Icicle,

Fantastic

Pantheon

York:

Books,

1963.

Inc.,

Co., Inc., 1963.

New

New

Art.

1962.

Inc.,

Tertz, Abram, The

SoLZHENiTSYN, ALEXANDER, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, trans, by Ralph Parker. New York: E. P. Button

&

Literature

Random House,

Updike, John, The Centaur. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 1963.

SvEvo, Italo, The Confessions of Zeno, trans, by Beryl de Zoete. London: Martin Seeker & Warburg, Ltd., 1962.

Pigeon Feathers.

,

New

York: Alfred

A. Knopf, Inc., 1962.

NOTE TO THE READER his review of recent literature, Mr. Bellow treats three subjects of fundamental importance in modern literary criticism: the changing conception of the indi-

the Syntopicon chapter on

In

nature of comedy,

the

vidual,

rise

and the mass

become

is

less

that this diminished status

and the

lections

by Mr.

Two

of these are particu-

larly striking. First, the prison

reflected in

described in

One Day

experiences

in the Life of Ivan

Denisovich are similar in

many ways

Pierre Bezukhov's experiences in a

prison

classic statements of the threat

stoy's

se-

included in Great Books of the

Western World.

important, and

Great Books of the Western World,

one of the

are cited under Happi-

Several of the works reviewed

recent literature. The reader who is interested in exploring this subject further will find, in

life

Bellow have interesting parallels in the

his

is

under top-

ness 4b.

society, the individual has

increasingly

Man

while passages expressing the tragic

view of human

view that, of industrialism, democracy,

definition of tragedy. It

with the

ic 12,

camp

to

French

in Russia as described in Tol-

War and

Peace (Vol. 51, pp. 547aSecond, the

to individuality

posed by the mass society—

555c, 575b-582a, 604b-609a)

On

Liberty (Vol. 43, pp. 267-

behavior of the soldiers in James Jones's The Thin Red Line bears a close resem-

S. Mill's J.

323), especially Chapters 3 and

4.

.

and conceptions of them

blance to that depicted in some of the battle scenes in War and Peace. Thus, in the

are set forth in the passages in Great Books of the Western World which are cited in the Syntopicon chapter on Poetry under topic 4h. The all-important work in

Nicholas Rostov enters his first batconvinced of his own importance—he is "strong, happy, and loved," but after being wounded and left without help, he is

As

for

comedy and

tional definitions

this area

is,

tragedy, the tradi-

of course, Aristotle's

(Vol. 9, pp. 681-699).

amples of comedy and

The

On

latter, tle

forced to realize that as an individual he

Poetics

of

greatest ex-

no significance (see

lOld-llOa, c).

satire are listed in

179

ibid., especially

is

pp.

LEONARD ENGEL( was

bom

in

New

left)

,

one of America's most

He was educated

York City in 1916.

He

and the University of Chicago.

prolific science writers,

at

Columbia University

has specialized in science and medicine

almost from the beginning of his career as

first a newspaper and magazine World War II, as a free-lance science writer. He has published nearly four hundred signed articles on science, is a regular contributor to Scientific American, Harper's, and the New York Times Magazine, and is the author of several books, including The Operation and The Sea, the first volume in Life's Nature Library series.

writer and correspondent, and then, since

KENNETH BRODNEY

was born

spent most of his early years in

New

versity of Wisconsin

and the University of

of Current History magazine, has

United

States,

and

for six years

Press, serving the last his interests is

in Brisbane, Australia, in 1919,

two years

but

He was educated at the UniTexas. He was an associate editor

York City.

worked for a number of newspapers in the was a foreign correspondent for the United as

bureau chief

have turned from international

currently a reporter, writer, and editor for

in

affairs

NBC

Moscow. In recent to

years,

science reporting.

News.

He

BIOLOGICAL SCIExNCES AND MEDICINE LEONARD ENGEL, KENNETH BRODNEY one experimented without a preconceived idea, one would be actif one observed with preconconceived ideas, one would make poor observations and run the risk If

ing at random; but on the other hand,

of taking one's o\%tl conceptions for reality.

Claude Bernard

While

the healing of the sick

ence,

modem

a matter of art^ as well as sci-

is

medicine owes

curati\e powers largely to

its

sci-

tools of science, the experimental

ence and to the most po\\erful of all method. In the past twent\-fi\e years, \^"e ha\e had the benefit of an unprecedented flood of medical advances. Medicine has forged them

by drawing upon the

biological sciences for

understanding of the machinery of

for

life,

and not least, for techniques of discovering and testing new means of combating

ideas,

disease.

In short,

medicine has progressed

through experimental research.

Medical research involves risks as well as As Claude Bernard, the great nineteenth-century physiologist noted four generations ago, there is only one wholly satisfacgains.

man

tory experimental animal for the study of

and human medicine: man erly organized

promising is

new

uncovered,

himself. In prop-

medical research, whenever a means of dealing with disease it

is

assayed as thoroughly as

possible in the laboratory

and

in

mammals

Claude Bernard

with similarities to man, such as mice, rabbits, dogs, and monkeys. Because no two species are entirely alike in physiology or biochemistry, howe\'er, no one can know in advance precisely what will happen when a new drug or method of treatment is

tried in a

human being

takingly planned, the

always an experiment, a 1

for the first time.

Whether accidental

or pains-

human trial of a new medical treatment is human experiment, and there is some risk that

first

." ( Hippocrates, The Law, Vol. 10, is of all the Arts the most noble the nature and constitution^of the to attends art, and an is "Medicine 144a); p. Plato, Gorgias, patient, and has principles of action and reason in each case Vol. 7, p. 281b).

"Medicine

.

.

.

181

Biological Sciences

and Medicine

can be escaped only by giving up and trying nothing new— at whatever cost in continued suflFering and death from diseases still unconquered. Well-managed research can at best minimize the risks and see that they are taken only for worthwhile ends. In practice, this is easier said than done, especially when one considers

things will go wrong.

The

risk

altogether on progress in medicine

that medical research

is

a large

and complex human

human

activity, subject

not

but also to the pressure of often divergent interests. The lesson has been driven home recently by a singularly shocking mass tragedy, the birth of thousands of grievonly to the usual imperfections of

ously deformed babies to

new

activity,

women who had

"sleeping pill" early in pregnancy.

taken a seemingly innocuous active ingredient of the pill

The

was thalidomide, a synthetic drug with a molecule composed of thirteen atoms of carbon, ten of hydrogen, four of oxygen, and two of nitrogen, linked together in a pair of rings with a third ring attached as a "side

group." Before the sleeping-pill tragedy had run

its

course,

it

had raised

questions cutting through a broad nexus of moral, political, legal, and technical scientific issues.

The

desirability of a profit-making

drug indus-

had been called into question, as also, among other things, the role of government in medicine, the eflSciency and integrity of U.S. government agencies, the adequacy of contemporary drug-testing methods, the ethics of medical research, and the humanity of present abortion try

laws.

The thalidomide

disaster

The

more dramatic aspects of the thalidomide tragedy are well known. But the origin and inner history of the tragedy are worth exploring in some detail to focus upon the issues raised and the very real diflBculties of plotting a

course that will adequately bar similar disasters

and yet not deny man the fruits of medical research. Thalidomide was developed as a sedative and widely marketed in western Europe in 1959 and 1960 by a German pharmaceutical firm, Chemie Griinenthal. It had several apparent advantages over older sedatives. It was inexpensive, acted quickly to produce deep, "natural," all-night sleep, and was free of disagreeable morning-after effects. Moreover, in contrast particu-

(most widely utilized sedative in the United most widely utilized means of committing suicide), thalidomide seemed almost proof against misuse. Germany had no drug laws comparable to those of the United States. Nevertheless, the manufacturer carried out safety tests in laboratory animals. These showed the drug to have an extraordinarily low level of toxicity. The finding was confirmed for man when would-be suicides tried to end their lives with overdoses of the drug: all survived very large doses without detectable harm. larly

to

States,

barbiturates

and

also the

182

Leonard Engel, Kenneth Brodney

As a result, German drugstores were permitted to sell thalidomide without a doctor's prescription. Under the trade name Contergan, it became the most popular sleeping pill in West Germany, employed in homes, hospitals, and mental institutions alike. In medicines with such trade names as Algosediv and Grippex, it was combined with aspirin and other drugs as a remedy for colds, coughs, nervousness, neuralgia, headache,

and asthma.

A

special liquid

form for children,

Johns Hopkins University, who went to Germany to investigate thalidomide, became West Germany's baby sitter. And since, in addition to being a "safe" sedative, thalidomide

reported

Dr.

Helen

Taussig

B.

of

relieved the nausea of pregnancy,

take

it

to obtain a

good

doctors told pregnant

women

to

night's sleep.

During 1960, manufacturing firms in several other countries obtained manufacture thalidomide. As yet, there had been no reports untoward efiFects from the drug. But the disaster was already beginof ning to take shape. Physicians were reporting the birth of an increasing licenses to

number

of infants with a previously rare de-

The name, from the Greek words phoke, meaning "seal," and melos, meaning "limb," describes the deformity: failure of the long bones of the upper and lower arm to develop in the unborn child, so that at birth the hand extends almost directly from the shoulder, like the flipper of a seal. Phocomelia is ordinarily so rare that most

fect called phocomelia.

doctors never see a case in a lifetime of practice.

had been West Germany. there were about

In the ten years 1948-58, there

possibly fifteen cases in

all

of

But in the single year 1959, a dozen cases, and in 1960, babies with seallimb deformities were seen in almost every pediatric clinic in that country.

Moreover, there

were striking diflFerences between these cases Infant with phocomelia and those previously known to physicians; two German pediatricians regarded them as representing a new type of birth defect and even wished to give it a new name. In previous cases of phocomelia, only one arm was usually affected; in the cases that now began appearing, both arms were generally deformed, and in about half the cases the legs were also affected, though seldom to the same degree. (If both arms and legs were very severely deformed, the infants were unable to turn over in their cribs and the inactivity soon led to fatal pneumonia.) In addition, some of the babies also bore a hemangioma (strawberry mark) extending from the forehead down the nose and across the upper hp, but the mark was neither harmful nor permanent.

183

Biological Sciences

and Medicine

Other deformities occurring in many of the infants were absence of the external ear, abnormal placement of the internal ear, and abnormalities of the digestive tract, heart, and circulatory system. Nevertheless, most of the children seemed to have good (if not normal) hearing and normal inteUigence.

By the summer of 1961, hundreds of infants with phocomelia were being born, and West German physicians knew that they were up against a disastrous epidemic of a disastrous disease. Separate investigations were launched in the cities of Bonn, Hamburg, Kiel, and Miinster. At first, the investigating physicians suspected a hereditary factor, in part because earlier cases of phocomelia had been found to be genetic in origin. Aside from the fact that no evidence of a hereditary

be found, the cases were soon so numerous and so widethis explanation absurd. A search was accordingly begun for some external factor that could have aflFected the infants, probably early in pregnancy, when the limbs and organ systems are beginning

factor could

spread as to

make

to form.

The search was conducted with the aid of questionnaires, sent to the parents of deformed children and to their physicians, asking about X-ray exposures during pregnancy, any drugs or hormones taken, the use of soaps, foods, and food preservatives, methods of contraception, tests. One of the physicians making these inquiries.

and even pregnancy Dr. Widukind Lenz

of

Hamburg, noted

that 20 per cent of the mothers

replying to his questionnaire reported taking Contergan during their

pregnancies. Lenz re-questioned

time

specifically

now

said they

all

the parents on his

about the thalidomide

had taken

they had considered

it;

pill.

many had

list,

asking this

Fifty per cent of the mothers

not reported

it

before, because

too innocuous to be worth mentioning. It often happens that the first word of something wrong slips out almost accidentally. Lenz was well aware of what was at stake. If thalidomide was responsible for the outbreak of phocomelia, each day's delay in making a report would add to the toll. But the Hamburg physician was also a cautious man, determined to refrain from identifying the drug publicly until he had documented the connection between it and phocomelia. This he eventually did; he was also able to fix the critical time for exposure and to show that even a single dose of the drug could be damaging when taken at the time the limb buds are forming in the embryo, between the twenty-eighth and forty-second day after conception. Meanwhile, Lenz warned the manufacturer privately about his suspicions. A few days later, Lenz also related his suspicions at a meeting of pediatricians, without naming the drug he had in mind. That evening, a fellow physician approached him and asked, confidentially, whether the drug was Contergan. His wife, the doctor explained, had taken Contergan and had had a phocomelic child. it

184

)

Leonard Engel, Kenneth Brodney

was Contergan he suspected was soon known to physicians throughout West Germany. By the end of November, 1961, Griinenthal had withdrawn Contergan and other thahdomide-containing drugs from sale, and the West German Ministry of Health had issued an official warning against their use by pregnant women. Before the epidemic had run its course, West German mothers had had more than five thousand thalidomide babies, and well over a thousand had been bom in eighteen other countries. In West Germany, Lenz's admission that

plans were

made

it

for rehabilitation centers for the pitiful victims.

numbers do not reveal the depth to

whom

But

of a tragedy in terms of the individuals

the tragedy occurs. In Belgium, a devout

family decided, in family council, to do

Roman Cathohc

away with a phocomelic baby

borne by the mother. The prescription for the needed overdose of barbiturates was written by the family doctor, also a Roman Catholic ( whose sister-in-law later also bore a thalidomide baby). The lethal dose was administered by the mother, alone with her deformed child. (The family and the doctor were all tried for murder, and all were acquitted. The United States was spared all but a few cases of deformed thalidomide babies. This was not so much due, however, to its food

and drug laws (generally believed to be very nearly the strictest in the world), as to no less than three distinct strokes of good luck and to the alertness and stubbornness of a staff physician at the Food and

Drug Administration In

September,

Merrell

Company

in

1960,

Washington. U.S. pharmaceutical

firm,

a

of Cincinnati, applied to the

FDA

the William

S.

for permission to

compounds which its Canadian subsidiary was already selling in Canada. Under the basic U.S. drug law— the Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act of 1938— a manufacturer who wished to introduce a drug he had not manufactured before produced ( even a drug which was not really new, but was already being by another manufacturer) had to file a new-drug application with the FDA. The application had to describe how the drug was manufactured and the purposes it was intended to serve, and furnish proof of its safety when used for these purposes. Under the regulations then in effect, the FDA had sixty days within which to examine the application and make known its objections, if any. If there were none, the drug would distribute

in

the

United

then be permitted to go on

The

first stroke of

States

thalidomide

sale.

good fortune

for the U.S.

can be said to have

happened even before Merrell filed its application. Thalidomide had been developed abroad, and the unwitting mass human experiment was already under way in other countries. If thalidomide had been developed in the U.S. and brought to the FDA at an early stage, long before any potential for harm was suspected, the story might well have been different. Such experts as Dr. Taussig

that

was

to reveal

its

defects

185

Biological Sciences

and Medicine

(the Taussig of the medical-surgical team that devised the famous Blalock-Taussig "blue baby" operation, and a physician with a lifelong interest in birth defects) believe that permission for sale would have

been granted. "It was an excellent sedative," Dr. Taussig has observed, "and it [then] appeared to be safe." As it was, the second stroke of luck also came at the start. The FDA found Merrell's application incomplete, and immediate clearance of thalidomide was denied. While Merrell worked to compile the additional required information, reports began to appear in medical journals abroad of a relatively minor problem with thalidomide: the occurrence of a form of neuritis among persons taking the drug over an extended period. The reports were seen by Dr. Frances Oldham Kelsey, a physician and pharmacologist on the FDA staflF. She also noticed that the Merrell company proposed to recommend thalidomide for use against nausea of pregnancy. From work with the anti-malaria drug quinine during

World War

II,

Dr. Kelsey had

scious of the very different efiFects

drugs

newborn

may have on

become con-

and unpredictable the fetus or the

compared with their efiFects on older children and adults. She asked Merrell for

infant,

further data, particularly on the safety

of thalidomide during pregnancy. This second

delay saved the United States from a catas-

trophe like that in Europe, for Dr. Frances Kelsey

the

phocomelia

disaster

now

finally

reports of

began

to

appear.

Only nine births of babies with thalidomide-induced phocomelia have been reported in the United States. In all cases, the thalidomide was obtained abroad. But the modesty of that figure involved yet another piece of luck— a piece of luck that nearly concealed a serious weakness in U.S. drug controls. The new-drug regulations allow manufacturers to

new drugs for trial in patients in advance of a liSuch tests are required to establish the uses and limitations of a new drug and to provide the FDA with information needed to determine whether the drug should be licensed for sale. Many manufacturers exercise great care in distributing new drugs for trial, restricting them to physicians with qualifications and facilities for chnical research. Others, however, have not been nearly so discriminating, and have sent new-drug

distribute samples of

cense for

sale.

186

Leonard Engel, Kenneth Brodney samples out

less selectively,

distribution

would help promote future

While waiting

company

Merrell

Of

these, the

perhaps in the not unjustified hope that wide sale of the drug.

for the thalidomide application to

FDA

on, the

Some 247 admitted

subsequently interviewed 1,168.

they had not signed statements

(

required by

FDA

their qualifications for conducting clinical tests;

remember whether they had signed such

regulations

)

certifying

640 others could not

Only 276 had and 102 had

statements.

given Merrell the required written reports on their

made

be acted

sent the drug to 1,267 physicians for clinical testing.

tests;

man" (as the pharmaceutical on the doctor. But the drug had

oral reports, usually to a "detail

industry terms

salesmen)

calling

patients, including 3,272 women of childbearing And 624 of the latter were pregnant. Miraculously, most of these women had not taken the drug until after the critical second month of pregnancy. No deformed babies were bom to them.

been given to 15,904 age.

The most celebrated thaHdomide case in the U.S. involved Mrs. Robert W. (Sherri) Finkbine, a 30-year-old Phoenix television actress and mother of four children, who chose to have an abortion instead of a possibly deformed infant. Her efforts to obtain the abortion focused attention

anew upon

existing U.S. abortion laws. Early in pregnancy, Mrs.

Finkbine took thalidomide tablets her husband had bought in Europe.

When newspaper

accounts of the disaster in Europe alerted her and

her husband to the possible consequences, they decided to seek an not permitted even probably, defective fetus. A Phoenix hospital nevertheless agreed to permit the operation until newspaper publicity made it clear that it could not be performed "quietly" (as is the case with most of the few abortions abortion. In Arizona, as in the other 49 states, abortion

is

for such a reason as the elimination of a possibly, or

done

in

reputable

U.S.

hospitals

a court had best be sought.

When

today),

and that the sanction

of

the judge decided that the law was

the law, the Finkbines went to Sweden, where a medical board author-

makes no specific mention ground for abortion. The abortion was performed and the unborn child was found in fact to be deformed. Dr. Robert E. Hall of Columbia University's College of Physicians and Surgeons spoke for a wide body of opinion when he wrote in an angry article that "the true issue raised in this country by thalidomide was not weak drug laws, but archaic abortion laws." ized the operation, although Swedish law also

of anticipated fetal deformity as a permissible

The

FDA

While

and the food and drug laws many

Dr. Hall's view undoubtedly reflected the feeling of

persons, there

was a problem

in the U.S.

drug laws, and

in the laws themselves, then in their administration

187

by the

FDA

if

not

and

in

and Medicine

Biological Sciences

the complex of processes by which new drugs emerge from the laboratory and come into use. This was evident at numerous points in the story of how thalidomide came not to be marketed in the United States.

One problem

could be

summed up

by Dr. Taussig have been licensed

in the observation

thalidomide would almost

certainly

and others that had been developed in the U.S. Another was the apparent laxity the manufacturer and the lack of enforcement of FDA regulations

if it

of in

the distribution of thalidomide samples for "clinical testing." Still another

was the slowness of the FDA to react. Although thahdomide was withdrawn from the market in Germany in the fall of 1961, no action was taken by the FDA to warn either the American medical profession or the American public. The first warning was a letter from the Merrell company requesting physicians who had received supplies of the drug to destroy or return remaining supplies. It was not sent until the early spring of 1962. The FDA itself took no public action until midsummer, when a Washington newspaper finally broke the story of how close the U.S. had come to tragedy. One consequence of the public commotion that followed was a hasty, widely publicized search by the FDA for samples of the drug; it was this activity that revealed the free-and-easy manner in which the drug had been distributed. Another result was to focus public attention upon both the FDA and the laws under which it operated. The Food and Drug Administration was established as the Bureau of Foods and Drugs in the Department of Agriculture in 1906 when Congress passed the Wiley Act, the first U.S. food and drug law. A primary target of the act was the host of worthless patent medicines then flooding the market —tonics containing little more than spiced alcohol, tuberculosis remedies heavily laced with opium, fraudulent herbal cure-alls, fake syphilis remedies. The Bureau succeeded in eliminating the worst ofiFenders, despite cumbersome procedures imposed on it by the law and despite a problem that has plagued food and drug law enforcement from the beginning-

money and manpower. The Bureau (its name was changed to FDA in 1930) operated under the 1906 law until 1938, when Congress adopted the present basic food lack of

and drug law. This law gave the FDA a considerably broadened grant of power, including jurisdiction over cosmetics. Curiously, the most important provision of the law— the section requiring licensing and proof of

new drugs— was a last-minute addition. It was inserted into the law when more than 70 persons died after taking an "elixir" containing the new drug sulfanilamide dissolved in a poisonous solvent, diethylene glycol, a widely used automobile antifreeze. The manufacturer reportedly had tested the concoction for flavor, but not for toxicity. In 1959 Senator Estes Kefauver of Tennessee began looking into the safety for

pharmaceutical industry. His starting point was the high price of drugs.

188

Leonard Engel, Kenneth Brodney Investigators for his Senate Antitrust and

made

ly

prices for

Monopoly Subcommittee quick-

headlines with the discovery that manufacturers' (wholesale)

some drugs

in

wide use were

as

much

"manufactmring cost"

is

manu-

as ten times their

facturing cost. As the pharmaceutical industry

was quick

a bare-bones, out-of-pocket, item;

to point out, it

omits over-

head, distribution, research and development, and numerous other

mate items

of cost,

and

hardly a vaHd basis for computing

is

legiti-

profits.

it was clear from the hearings that the pharmaceutical grown enormously and profitably, and that all was not well for the public, at least in the relationship between the FDA and the giant it was supposed to regulate. Since 1938, the varied industries within the FDA's purview— food, drug, and cosmetic— had grown to a combined retail-value gross of

Nevertheless,

industry had

about $100 billion a year, approximately one-fifth of the total annual U.S. production of goods and services. The greatest part of this, of course, represented food products. But nearly $2 billion worth of cosmetics

were being sold each year drug sales had reached $3

(as against $5 million a year in 1906), billion a year

of $250 million in the mid-1930's

)

.

and

(as against an annual total

In the drug

field,

was charged not only with checking manufacturing

moreover, the

FDA

operations, but with

carrying out certification tests on batches of insulin and antibiotics, with policing the nation's 56,000 drugstores to see that prescription drugs are sold only on prescription, and with passing on the safety of new drugs pouring from pharmaceutical laboratories at a rate of over 400

To perform these numerous and varied tasks, the FDA had an imderpaid stafiF of 1,600 and an annual budget, in the fiscal year 1960, of less than $14 million. In the course of the Kefauver hearings, the pubHc heard some of what this imbalance between means and responsibilities must lead to. Dr. Barbara Moulton, a physician formerly in the FDA's new-drug division, reported that the agency's evaluation methods had become "hasty" and

a year.

One

"extremely dangerous." for

reason was lack of

manpower and

facilities

an independent check on pharmaceutical company data. As a

much of the data, the FDA Many FDA oflBcials, Dr. Moulton for

the industry's

word

for

it

result,

could only take the industr>-'s word.

added, were only too inclined to take any\vay, thanks to long "fraternization" and

"close association" with the pharmaceutical industry

and

"for personal

gain."

In short, the

FDA

was

from a disease that has been a

suffering

perennial plague of federal regulatory agencies. In part through of

common

good graces

of

an industry that

may

represent their only hope for a

future job, employees of federal regulatory agencies can easily

spokesmen

ties

professional interests, in part through a wish to stay in the

for the industry they are

become

supposed to regulate. In a time of

189

Biological Sciences

and Medicine

easy morality this can lead to outrageous "conflicts of interest." One such case came to light through the Kefauver investigation. To students of American medicine, it could hardly have been more shocking. The man

involved was Dr. Henry Welch, son of Dr. WiUiam H. Welch-'Topsy" Welch, one of the founders of the Johns Hopkins Medical School and a father of scientific medicine in America. While chief of the FDA's division for hcensing and testing antibiotics, Henry Welch had received $287,142 over a seven-year period as writer and editor for two journals on antibiotics deriving almost all their support from manufacturers of antibiotics.

In April, 1961, Senator Kefauver introduced a nation's drug laws and plug loopholes revealed

bill

to

tighten the

by the committee

was referred to the Senate Committee on the Judiciary, a body dominated by Southern conservatives. In the committee, it was subjected to a process of attrition, which ate away with equal effect at provisions reasonable men could differ on and provisions objected to almost solely by drug-industry lobbyists. The bill's course was strangely reminiscent of that of the 1938 law, which was similarly subjected to years of whittling away in committee. And just as the disaster with the eli?dr of sulfanilamide had rescued the 1938 bill from oblivion, so the thahdomide disaster saved the Kefauver bill. The disclosure of the thalidomide disaster and of the role played by luck and the stubbornness of a single woman physician produced prompt —in fact, almost hasty— action on two fronts. A restrengthened version of the Kefauver bill was quickly voted through the committee and the Senate, and a companion bill, introduced by Representative Oren Harris hearings. It

House. The final bill, known as Drug Industry Act or the Kefauver-Harris Act of 1962, became law on October 10. The Food and Drug Administration, meanwhile— belatedly of Arkansas, just as quickly passed the

the

utilizing authority

it

had possessed

right

along— drafted and put into

ef-

governing the experimental use drugs. In addition, at the height of the furor over the unfortunate

fect early in 1963 a

new German

of

stiff

set of regulations

drug, a citizens' advisory committee— originally set

up

to consider

FDA

revealed by the Kefauver hearings— pubHshed a set of recommendations for reorganization of the FDA. Early in the new year, the FDA's parent agency, the Department of Health,

shortcomings in the

Education and Welfare, moved to put the committee's major recommendations into effect as well.

THE REVISED DRUG RULES The critical question, of

course,

is

to

what extent these various

reforms will actually serve the public interest,

i.e.,

without bringing medical progress to a crawl or a seeing

what the new measures provide. 190

increase public safety halt.

Let us begin by

Leonard Engel, Kenneth Brodney

Under the 1962

manufacturers must submit not only evidence of

act,

(as under the 1938 law), but also "substantial proof"

safety

eflFectiveness

of a

new

drug. In testing drugs, moreover,

of the

"adequate"

animal tests must precede human tests. Under the old law, new drugs were allowed to go on sale automatically (in the absence of specific FDA disapproval) within sixty days of the filing of a new-drug application; now, aflBrmative FDA approval must be given before a new drug may be marketed. Further, the Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare now has the power to order ofiF the market any drug posing an "im-

minent threat" to health. Previously, the FDA could move against a harmful drug, once it was licensed for sale, only by persuasion or through a clumsy, roundabout "misbranding" provision inapplicable in practice to most drugs. Manufacturing, labeling, and advertising regulations were also tightened. Pharmaceutical manufacturers must now be registered with the federal government, and plants and laboratories must be inspected at least

every two years; drugs produced in unsanitary or mismanaged

may be seized. (common

and advertising must carry drug in letters at least half as large as those used for the brand name, and all advertising for a drug must include a brief statement of the drug's effectiveness, side effects, and conditions under which it should not be used. A provision stricken from

plants

the generic

the final version

Also, both drug labels

medical)

name

of the

would have required the consent

of

all

patients before

they were given an experimental drug. Since this would have interfered

with controlled

trials of

conceal the fact that a

new drugs (in which it new drug is being used

is

often necessary to

in order to eliminate

was modified. Consent is now required except where the physician "deems it not feasible" or where "in his professional judgment [consent] would be contrary to the best psychological factors),

the provision

interests of the patient."

The FDA's new

rules for clinical tests of

new drugs were published

August, 1962. As finally put into effect in February, 1963, they called for safeguards that should have been in force since the passage of the in

1938 law.

A

major requirement

is

that manufacturers give the

FDA

notice and full details in advance of the distribution of drugs for testing

among other things, to allow the FDA to communicate and immediately, in an emergency, with physicians taking part in a test. Plans for drug trials must also be filed with the FDA in advance— in outline form for early phases of a trial, when only limited numbers of patients will be involved, and in fuller detail for trials involving large numbers of patients. Changes in plan, moreover, must be communicated to the FDA, and physicians taking part in clinical trials must submit a statement of qualifications for carrying on medical re-

purposes, in order, directly

search.

191

Biological Sciences

No

less

and Medicine

important are regulations requiring the manufacturer to

in-

and report to the FDA and all investigators testing a particular drug any findings suggesting "significant hazards, contraindications, side effects and precautions." "Alarming" findings must be reported immediately. Trials are to be halted and all investigators and the FDA notified, pending re-evaluation of the drug, in the event of an vestigate promptly

"substantial doubt" should arise about the safety Manufacturers must also submit detailed data on pre-clinical laboratory tests and "adequate" records of the clinical trial, including case histories of patients and information on how given

"alarming" finding or of continuing a

if

trial.

quantities of drugs

were used.

The recommendations

of the citizens' advisory

altogether diflFerent character. in the quantity

centration in a

FDA

committee were of an

called for a sharp increase

and their conwhich would carry on research and consumer protection as well as the

and quality of Food and Drug

on various aspects of testing

FDA's routine

The committee

scientific duties.

scientific activities

Institute

A

parallel reorientation of the agency's

approach was also asked, with less emphasis on inspection and policing and more on consumer and industry education. To carry out such changes, the committee said it would be necessary to appoint men of broad scientific background to the top FDA posts instead of nonscientists risen from the inspector ranks, as in the past. The creation of a national advisory council to obtain expert outside counsel and guidance in planning was also urged. In December, 1962, the division to carry out

its

FDA

reorganized and expanded the new-drug

greatly enlarged duties under both the 1962 act

and the FDA's own new experimental-drug regulations. Soon afterward, official promise was made that the Food and Drug Administration would be reorganized along lines "closely following" the citizens' advisory committee report.

an

THE "new" FDA So much for what has been put on paper. How well will the "new" FDA do what it is supposed to do? A key factor in the protection the U.S. public actually receives against harmful drugs is the warmth of Congress towards the FDA. In 1938 and 1962, Congressional interest was high; the agency received broad new grants of power. At other times, Congressional ardor has waned and economy-minded Congressmen, abetted by an assortment of industry lobbyists, have been able to nullify the grants of power at least in part by keeping FDA's appropriations down. In other words, how the FDA will now do will depend on what kind of support the agency receives in the next two or three years from Congress and other government agencies. At the moment of writing, the signs were not too encouraging. Both Senator Kefauver and

192

Leonard Engel, Kenneth Brodney Senator Paul Douglas of processes,

Illinois,

were openly voicing

that

pungent

fears over the

critic of U.S.

FDA's

government

ability to administer

new law. And one spring day. Dr. Kelsey— the woman who had held back thalidomide and who had become chief of FDA's new Investigational Drug Branch— took reporters on a visit to her unit. The unit was soon to receive reports on all drugs currently under test in human patients in the U.S.— two copies each of an estimated 2,500 reports, or 5,000 documents in all. She estimated that they would form a stack 1,250 feet high— more than twice the height of the Washington Monument. She showed reporters the space assigned for storing them: a room measuring fifteen by twenty feet. The reports were to be analyzed by members of a newly tripled staflF of doctors, and data from the reports were to be fed into a computer for cross-reference purposes. There was no space for the newly recruited doctors to work in, and no room for the computer. The least that could be expected was a log-jam certain to keep off the market for many months hundreds of new drugs, good and bad, useful as well as the

indifferent. is the degree to which any set of laws well drawn and enforced, can eliminate the however and regulations, hazards attendant upon the introduction of new drugs or other treatments

More

to the point, though,

into medicine.

no drug

is

To begin

with, there

the often overlooked fact that

is

wholly innocuous. All drugs involve some risk of untoward

reactions, either because individuals differ in their reactions to drugs

or because there has

(even the most

skillful

been some misjudgment physician

may

in

the use of a drug

err); and, in general, the

more

powerful the drug as a healing agent, the greater the risk of untoward reaction. Some of the most essential medicines in the physician's black

bag

are, frankly, quite toxic.

The margin between the

An example

is

the heart stimulant, digitalis.

and a toxic dose is so narrow that severe reactions to digitalis are frequent; but the heart disease patient would be in even greater difficulties without the drug.

No

therapeutic dose

can insulate a patient completely against even when a familiar drug is involved. This is even more true of a new drug that has never before been used in a patient and whose performance in man, despite the most exhaustive tests in the animal laboratory, cannot possibly be known precisely in advance. There must come a time when a new drug or medical treatment is tried for the first time in a human being, or else the whole enterprise of medical research becomes a pointless academic exercise. rules

or regulations

risks of this kind,

Even

after the first trials of a

will continue to

new

be unavoidable

new

medicinal agent in humans, there

risks as

use of the

new

agent

is

extended

As the thalidomide episode showed, a drug may be quite suitable for the bulk of the population and yet have calamitous effects on the unborn child. As evidenced by the frequency to

sectors in the population.

193

Biological Sciences of aspirin poisoning in

children out of

all

young

and Medicine

children, a

proportion to

its

drug

may have

toxic effects in

effects in adults. Conversely, there

drugs— the thyroid hormone is one— which produce far greater effects There may even be groups of people in the population who react in an unusual and dangerous way to a drug because of some inherited abnormality'; thus, some individuals suffer toxic reactions to sulfa drugs because of an inherited enzyme deficiency. What a well conceived and executed new-drug regulation program can accomplish is to make sure that the preliminary laboratory work is well planned and carefully carried out; that trials in humans are properly arranged and are conducted by well-qualified in\'estigators; that there and, is prompt recognition and communication of untoward results; finally, that the game is worth the candle. By the latter, we mean that a new drug that does seem to involve risk be used, initially at least, only for serious illnesses for which present methods of treatment are unsatisfactory; and that standards of safety be set very high for drugs used in treating trivial ailments or ailments for which safe, adequate medication already exists. And a policy of conservatism should be follo\\'ed especially in prescribing new drugs for women who are or might become pregnant. For many years, responsible surgeons have made it a practice to avoid all but emergency surgery during pregnancy. Not that surgery cannot be carried out during pregnancy; if needed, such operations can be managed with great success and without ill effect to the fetus. It is simply thought a matter of common sense to postpone surgery, when possible, are

in adults than in children.

until after it

comes

pregnancy.

A

similar attitude of reserve

is

appropriate

when

to drugs.

should be noted that none of

this is really new. Thoughtful physihave been pursuing such policies for decades. In considering new drugs for licensing, moreover, the Food and Drug Administration has long sought to fit its safet\' standards to the specific problem at hand, and on more than one occasion has applied them with judgment and zeal. It is a matter of record that the FDA has kept off the U.S. market a considerable number of drugs that have been widely sold abroad but were held to fall below U.S. safet>' standards. The troublesome problems lie elsewhere. A real diflBculty revolves, for instance, around the question of how large and what kind of clinical trial ought to be required for a specific new drug, and just what constitutes an adequate standard of safety for that drug. The problem is best illustrated by recalhng the case of one particular drug. A few years ago, a pharmaceutical firm developed a "psychic energizer"— a drug for the treatment of mental depression. No significant untoward reactions were noted either in animal studies or in a clinical trial lasting eighteen months and embracing nearly 9,000 patients. The drug, Monase, was It

cians

accordingly cleared for

sale.

194

Leonard Engel, Kenneth Brodney

More than

a year later, after use in hospitals throughout the country,

three deaths from failure of the blood-forming tissues in the bone

occurred in patients receiving Monase.

When

still

marrow

another death occurred

under similar circumstances some months later, the FDA requested the manufacturer to withdraw Monase. At that time, the total frequency of such deaths was between one per 22,000 patients receiving Monase (FDA figure) and one per 35,000 (manufacturer's figure). Monase was withdrawn. The episode raises two points. The first is that side effects with a low order of frequency (as

is

the case with

many

serious side effects)

are

Very large clinical trials often undetectable quite hazardous as sale to an equal as may be required— and these can be the FDA set its whether number of patients. The second question is in trials of

safety

standard for

Monase

reasonable

too

high.

size.

The

FDA

noted

that

other

"psychic energizers" are available, but some psychiatrists assert that Monase was more effective than many and was well worth the "small"

There is no simple formula for resolving such and conscientious men will continue to differ over work them out one by one, making mistakes from time to

risk involved in its use.

questions; honest

them and

to

time.

There are other problems. The evaluation of a new drug

in

the

laboratory depends on the ability of the researcher to anticipate prob-

lems that might arise in the use of a drug and to devise laboratory "models" that will bring them out. This is by no means easy. At the time that thalidomide was in the laboratory stage of development, comparatively possibility of

little

thought was given by drug researchers to the to an unborn child. It was known that drugs

harm by drugs

could cause birth defects in animals, but this generally occurred only under laboratory conditions so unusual as to make the likelihood of a similar occurrence in human beings seem extremely remote. Whether or not thalidomide was tested in pregnant animals at that time, however, it was tested later most intensively by investigators in half a dozen countries— and with almost uniformly negative results. The difficulty was that doses of thalidomide comparable to, or even rather larger than, those taken by human patients produced little detectable effect on animals (many were not even made sleepy) and produced no birth defects; massive doses, on the other hand, simply caused pregnant animals to abort too early in pregnancy for anything useful to be learned. It was not until much later that a dosage was found that would produce birth defects similar to phocomelia in rabbits. So the chances are that preliminary pregnant-animal tests would not have revealed thalidomide's devastating capacity for harm. And the chances are that accidents will attend future innovations in medicine, as they have attended innovations in the past.

195

Biological Sciences

and Medicine

RISK VERSUS PROGRESS

By way

of perspective,

it

innovation in medicine in

may be

useful to look into the

other areas and from a

problem of

different point of

Depending on how one's figures are chosen, experimental medicine can be made to appear either an exercise in irresponsibility and almost purposeless cruelty, or a never-failing source of good for all. It is of course neither, but a field in which accidents (sometimes dreadful ones) can happen even with the best of intentions, and which can call for very real courage on the part of both doctors and patients. It view.

not easy to plunge into a poorly charted sea, especially when just enough is known to make it clear that there are great hidden risks. As to accidents, we need recall only, for example, the development of poHo vaccine. In addition to the difficulties attending the introduction

is

of the

Salk vaccine in 1955

(difficulties

involving,

fundamentally, a

manufacturing process and of the U.S. Public Health Service), a wave of vaccine-induced polio cases accompanied the trial of an early polio vaccine in the 1930's. (There were risks for the physicians who developed that early vaccine, too; one of them committed failure of the

suicide. ) Moreover, although it attracted Httle newspaper attention, there was a problem in the summer and fall of 1962 with the Sabin oral polio vaccine: enough actual cases of polio were induced by the type III component of the vaccine to lead Canada to abandon its mass oral-vaccine immunization program and U.S. health authorities to recommend avoiding the use of type III oral vaccine in adults ( among whom most cases of vaccine-induced type III polio in the U.S. had occurred), except in epidemic emergencies.

Another accident of progress— comparable in scale to the thalidomide catastrophe— was the "epidemic" of blindness that suddenly broke out among premature babies in the early 1940's and swept through hundreds of hospital nurseries in the U.S. and elsewhere before it was brought under control in 1955. The blindness was due to retrolental fibroplasia, a term referring to the principal characteristic of the disease— the growth of an opaque membrane in the chamber of the eye behind the lens. No one knows just how many babies were irreversibly blinded by the disease; the number must total some thousands. A dozen years were needed to trace the membrane to its source. The cause was prolonged

exposure of the infants to high concentrations of oxygen; for reasons

have never been determined, the Hfe-giving gas stimulated abnormal gro\\i:h of tissue in the infants' eyes. The disease first appeared when piped oxygen and modem leakproof incubators were introduced into hospitals to deal with a central problem in caring for premature infants: their tendency to frequent, sudden, life-endangering respiratory crises. There was then no reason to suspect that the improved oxygen equipment would do anything but good. Retrolental fibroplasia essentially that

196

Leonard Engel, Kenneth Brodney disappeared once the cause was identified and hospitals learned to restrict the use of oxygen in premature babies to the minimum necessary to save

life.

The

retrolental

Medicine

is

fibroplasia

cases

key medical problem.

a

illustrate

not free to wait until every possible problem or hazard

worked out (even assuming

were possible) before applying a and they require treatment now, not tomorrow. Many illnesses, to be sure, carry little risk of permanent harm; in these, new methods of treatment can wait until much information about them has been gathered. Many illnesses, on the other hand, represent an immediate and serious threat. In these, the physician or surgeon may be under pressure to make the speediest possible use of new methods— despite incomplete information, and despite serious risk. This is most dramatically evident in surgery. During the 1930's, Dr. Evarts Graham of St. Louis performed the first successful removal of a lung, an operation done frequently today for cancer of the lung. Dr. Graham's first patient survived. The surgeon then had to wait until case is

new

treatment to

human

number twenty-one between

all

that

beings. Medicine deals with sick people,

for another to survive the operation; the nineteen in

died. "I think that

would have discouraged me," another

surgeon, himself a distinguished pioneer of heart surgery, remarked years later. "I don't think

I

would have had the nerve

to

go on— or be the

twenty-first patient either."

In the field of heart surgery, the development of which constitutes the great achievement of surgery in the past twenty-five years, operations have been preceded by animal-laboratory

work

new

that has often

reached extraordinary proportions. This has reduced but not eliminated the risk arising

when new

operations are

room. There have been, moreover, ing out of

all

An example relief of

tions are first

many

key aspects of a procedure is

first

attempted

in the operating

which systematic workthe laboratory was impossible.

cases in in

surgery of the mitral valve (one of the heart valves) for

damage caused by rheumatic among the commonest of all

successful mitral-valve operations

was no known method

heart disease; mitral-valve operaheart operations. At the time the

were carried

out, in 1948, there

of duplicating the eflFects of rheumatic heart

hope to do animals— a very different matter from operating on a human patient with a sick heart. So the surgeons attempting mitral-valve surgery had little worthwhile laboratory experience to guide them, and the mortality was very high.

disease in animals; the best the experimental surgeon could

was

to duplicate

some

of the manipulations in healthy

One

of these surgeons. Dr. Charles P. Bailey of Philadelphia, lost his

first

three patients (and also his operating privileges at the hospitals

involved), and he fully anticipated losing more.

uled

his

fourth

and

fifth

attempts

197

for

the

He

accordingly sched-

same day

at

different

Biological Sciences

and Medicine

he might get the fifth operation done before word could get around of the outcome of the fourth. The fifth was his first success and helped usher in a procedure that has usefully prolonged tens of thousands of lives. Further, it should be noted that despite the great risk, Dr. Bailey had no shortage of volunteers for the operation. Without hospitals so that

effective treatment, severe

patients

lose.

is fatal.

Dr. Bailey's

to lose. Unfortunately, there are always patients

had nothing

with nothing to

rheumatic heart disease

This

is

why

doctors and patients alike continue to

accept the risks that cannot be eliminated from innovation in medicine.

Organ transplantation

Inonthedespite anysearch for new ways long restless

difficulties as

which will go people needing the

of treating the sick, as there are

may well prove to have been a turning point one of the most significant developments in medical history. In centers in both the United States and abroad, medical-surgical teams began to doctor's help, the past year in

achieve indisputable success in the science-fiction feat of transplanting kidneys from one individual to another. Transplantation of kidneys be-

tween identical twins had been achieved in 1954. Now there were also a small but significant number of human beings— rather more than a dozengoing about for periods of several months to several years with a kidney donated by a fraternal twin, an ordinary brother or sister or other relative, or obtained from a stranger who had died (usually as the result of

an accident)

while

transplant beneficiary

still

was

possessing healthy

a university official in

One kidney Milwaukee; another,

kidneys.

Chicago now worrying about dieting to restrict the bloom her had gained after operation; a third, a man who stayed on to work in the hospital where he had undergone surgery. Medical investigators and experimental surgeons freely predicted before scientific meetings that kidney transplantation would be a widespread procedure within a few years, and that transplantation of other organs such as skin, lungs, and stomach would follow soon afterward. Organ transplantation has been a medical dream for hundreds of years. Occasional crude attempts to transplant tissues, usually from an animal but sometimes from one hapless human to another, go back at least to the sixteenth century. But systematic efforts to accomplish tissue and organ transplantation are hardly more than a dozen years old. What has held transplantation surgery back is not the technical difficulty of the surgery (surgeons already perform many operations much more a

girl in

figure

difficult technically

than the grafting of a kidney, for example), but the

transplanted from one individual to another do not "take," but after a short time are rejected. Thus skin so-called "graft barrier." Tissues

grafted from one person to another will appear healthy for several weeks; then, inevitably,

it

becomes inflamed and necrotic and 198

is

sloughed

off.

PL.\CING

THE CORDONA BUTTON (SYNTHETIC CORNEA^ IN A patient's eye

The

rejection of grafts

against the outside world.

is

a product of the body's defense system

We

are most famihar with the role of the

body's defenses in pro\'iding protection against viruses, bacteria, and the

The system

any "foreign" substance introduced from animals of an alien species, but from other individuals of the same species. There is only one exception. Individuals with identical hereditary^ make-up are apparently not "foreign" to each other and can exchange grafts. This has been sho\\Ti in experiments with inbred mice of established identical genetic constitution, and, in man, by studies of identical twins (individuals developed from the same fertilized ovum). There are situations in which the graft barrier does not matter. For like.

also reacts against

into the body, including tissues of alien origin— not only

example, blood vessels

may be

grafted \\Tthout concern for the barrier;

blood-\'essel grafts sers'e essentially as a temporary-

growth of new

framework

for the

\^essel tissue, which forms before the grafts are injured

the graft reaction. Corneal grafts

may

by

also "take" in a proportion of

patients without arousing a graft reaction. In order to

make most

tissue

some way must be found to breach the graft barrier. Several have' in fact been uncovered. But some of these are wholly impractical for man, and all are hazardous. Nevertheless, one has been made to work in human patients. The dozen-plus men and women walking about with "alien" kidneys in their bodies are proof or organ grafts stick, however,

of that.

199

Biological Sciences

The

best starting point for the

breakthrough

the

is

first

and Medicine

stor\-

of the

kidney transplantation

systematic attempt to carr>' out kidney grafting

occurred in 1953 and 1954 at Peter Bent Brigham Hospital in Boston, the hospital of the Harvard Medical School. Progressive physiin

man.

It

and surgeons had long been especially interested in two specific kinds of graft: skin and kidney. Skin grafts were wanted for the treatment of severe bums. Kidney transplants were wanted because incurable kidney disease is widespread and because life is feasible with, but impossible without, one functioning kidney. Moreover, the surgery cians

involved did not appear unusually

seemed

to

be speedy connection

difficult.

of the

The

principal requirement

new kidney

to the patient's

blood \essels, a task well within the capability of current surgical technique.

In 1953. investigators were just learning that graft rejection involves a

major component of the body's defense system: the formation of antibodies. There was yet no clear idea how the formation of antibodies against a graft might be pre\ented or how their action might be suppressed. The Harvard group— a young surgeon, Dr. David M. Hume, and three medical specialists, Drs. John P. Merrill, Benjamin F. Miller, and George W. Thorn— nevertheless decided to attempt kidney transplantation. There were any number of patients who had gained all the benefit they could from any other known means of treatment and who had literally nothing to lose. Nine transplants were attempted, all with kidneys obtained from patients who had died of chronic heart disease. Four of the kidneys functioned, and tsvo of them functioned for a surprising several months before they were rejected and destroyed.

In the

fall of

who knew

1954, a physician at a U.S. Public Health Service hospital

of the

Har\ard group's work was caring

for a

young veteran

dying of intractable kidney disease. He noticed that the patient was \isited daily by an apparently identical twin brother. The physician was also

aware that skin

identical twins.

He

grafts

had been exchanged successfully between

accordingly sent the patient and his brother to the

Harvard group. The outcome— after tests had proved the brothers to be twins— was a historic operation two days before Christmas. A kidney was taken from the healthy brother and grafted into the sick one. The operation was a complete success. Within minutes of being connected to the patient's blood vessels, the grafted kidney began to secrete urine, and within a few weeks the once-doomed patient was entirely well. Both the twin who received and the twin who gave the kidney remained entirely free of kidney ailments. (The twin who recei\'ed the kidney died in 1963, however, of heart disease.) The operation proved conclusively that a transplanted kidney would work, and kidne>' transplantation between identical twins has since in fact identical

200

Leonard Engel, Kenneth Brodney

become "routine"— as

uncommon

"routine" as

may be

expected for individuals as

whom

happens to need a new kidney while the other has a spare healthy one. About thirty identicaltwin transplants have been performed at various centers throughout the world to date. Nearly all have been unqualified successes. The success with identical twins spurred the search for

ways

incurably

as identical twins,

one of

to extend kidney grafting to other ill

kidney patients.

Researchers in the animal laboratory mean-

while were finding

how

the graft barrier could

be breached, although the methods they devised were bizarre and startling to say the least. One stemmed from the discovery that mammals are "immunologically immature" at birth and cannot form antibodies until some time later. Consequently, newborn animals will accept alien cells as their

injected immediately

own

if

they are

before or after birth.

Further, they will continue to accept cells or tissues life.

from the same alien source throughout

Skin grafts were successfully carried out

in mice, for example,

by

injecting the

mice

at

birth with cells from a particular strain of

Gray mouse with two-month-old

mouse and then later taking a skin graft from skin graft from a white mouse the same type of animal. A second method of breaching the barrier was even more drastic. Since antibodies are formed chiefly by cells in the bone marrow, the pulpy filling of most bones, an animal was prepared for a graft by destroying the bone stroyed

marrow with

marrow was then replaced by an The new marrow injection

the animal that furnished the graft. ability of the graft-receiving

but since

it

came from

The

of

restored

the

animal to form antibodies against germs; the new marrow did not

the graft donor,

react against the graft. Later,

destroy the

The demarrow from

a massive dose of X-rays.

marrow and do the

it

was found that drugs can be used

to

job of X-rays in this procedure.

tortuous neonatal cell-injection technique

was obviously

cable to the kidney-grafting problem. Desperate as

it

inappli-

was, the X-ray-and-

bone-marrow-replacement procedure was tried in a few desperately ill patients. It failed; the transplanted marrow never took, and the patients, lacking any means of combating germs, succumbed to infection. While this X-ray procedure failed, it finally led to a procedure through which the first real kidney grafting successes were achieved. It occurred to the Harvard group particularly that it might be possible to make do with an X-ray dose that merely suppressed antibody formation temporar-

201

Biological Sciences ily

of

and Medicine

marrow completely. During the interval temporary suppression, the patient's body might somehow become

instead of destroying the bone

tolerant of the graft.

There were many failures as this idea was worked out at Harvard and at other centers. No one knew how large a dose of X-rays to give or how to give it— in one big concentrated dose, or spread out over hours or days. There were no satisfactory guidelines from the animal laboratory; each species, including man, has its own pattern of response to radiation. No one knew whether antibody-suppressing treatment would have to be given after the graft and, if so, what kind and how long it might have to be continued. Merely protecting the patient against infection during the period of antibody suppression posed formidable problems.

was accompHshed in Murray (who had joined the Harvard group as surgeon) grafted a kidney from a Milwaukee student into his fraternal twin brother (born at the same time but developed from a separate fertilized ovum). Antibody-suppressing X-ray treatment was given the kidney recipient both before the operation and later, when rejection of the kidney threatened. Both the donor of the kidney and its recipient are alive and well over four years later. Soon afterward, a similar success was achieved in Paris. And now, as experience has been gained, successes have become more frequent if not yet regular occurrences. The nearly a dozen and a half living "graftees" of today represent the survivors among some 100 terminal kidney disease patients in whom, as of mid-1963, surgeons in Britain, France, and the U.S. had attempted

The

first

solidly successful non-identical-twin graft

January, 1959,

when

Dr. Joseph E.

non-identical-twin kidney grafts.

To is

see one

way

in

which

this

procedure of the surgery of tomorrow

carried out, let us follow the case of one kidney transplant patient,

from Chicago whose kidneys had been destroyed by is the fall of 1962, and the place, the hospital of the Medical College of Virginia in Richmond, where Dr. Hume— the surgeon in the early eflFort at kidney grafting at Harvard— is now chief of surgery. An older sister, with the backing of her family, has offered a kidney, which a variety of tests has proved suitable. Only a few weeks before. Dr. Hume (like other surgeons in this field) had promised himself not to take a kidney from a living donor until the chances for success in kidney grafting had greatly improved. Then he had watched a patient die while he waited vainly for a suitable kidney from a cadaver. (Kidneys for grafting must not only be free of disease, but must come from an individual of the same blood type as the patient and, in the case of cadaver kidneys, must be obtained within minutes of death.) Reluctantly, he agreed to accept the older a 19-year-old

infection.

girl

The time

sister's offer.

202

John and Andrew Riteris— non-identical twins on whom a kidney transplant operation was performed. John has two scars from, the removal of both kidneys, and Andrew has one from the removal of the kidney which he gave to his brother

On

the day before the operation,

the patient was

A

the hospital's radiation therapy unit.

wheeled into

150-roentgen dose of X-rays,

spread out over her whole body, was given, followed by another 150 to the spleen

huge

(an important source of antibody -forming tissues). The

machine could have given her the

2,000,000-volt X-ray

entire

dose in fifteen minutes; the procedure was actually spread out over a period of five hours, as experience had shown "easy does it" to be essential to the patient's survival.

The next morning, graft.

the patient and her sister were in adjoining operat-

Hume

ing rooms. In one,

prepared the 19-year-old

The new kidney would be placed

as satisfactory

as

e.g.,

take the

if

there

is

some

specific reason for

own

removing

the presence of disease that might spread from the old

kidneys to the

Meanwhile,

receive the

a position quite

the normal position. Ordinarily, the patient's

kidneys are taken out only

them,

girl to

in the pelvis,

new

one. This patient's

in the other operating

sister's left

own

kidneys were not removed.

room, another surgeon prepared to

kidney.

When Hume removed. A waiting Hume

was nearly ready, the sister's kidney was took it in a sterile pan and walked quickly

signaled that he

back to

his

own

operating room. "I never ask anyone else to carry

the kidney," he says. "If

it's

dropped,

I

have no one to blame but myself."

With all due deliberate speed, the graft was connected first to a leg artery and then to a leg vein. The shorter the period in which the kidney is without a blood supply, the better for the kidney and the better for the patient.

203

Biological Sciences

The kidney turned

and Medicine

a healthy pink as soon as the blood vessel clamps

were released. Now, Hume inserted the ureter, the kidney's outlet tube, which had been taken along with the kidney, into the bladder. Even before the operation was completed, the grafted kidney was producing urine. In the first twenty-four hours after the operation, it produced over sixteen quarts— all loaded with toxic wastes that neither the

girl's

onmi

kidney machine (a device that has come into recent years as an aid in kidney-disease emergencies) had wide use in remo\'e. been able to During the next three weeks, tlie patient underwent an extraordinary-

kidneys nor an

artificial

transformation, from a pathetically ant, rapidl\-

frail,

cranky, near-child to a pleas-

de\eloping \oung woman. Her appetite was voracious: she

day plus snacks in between. But the critical point in the graft procedure was yet to come. Three weeks after the operation, her white cell count— an index of the state of her bone marrow— began ate SL\ full meals a

to fall as a result of the X-ray treatment the da}- before tlie grafting

few da\s, white cells were all but undetectable in her Her bone marrow was effecti\ely paralyzed. Xo antibody-fomiing cells were being produced. This protected the new kidne\- against operation. In a

blood.

a graft reaction, but

To

it

protect her, she

left

her helpless against infection.

was placed

in a sterile

room— a new

facilit\' at

the

and the first of its kind anywhere. Air filters and germicidal lamps keep the interior of the room freer of bacteria than an operating room. Entry is through an air lock, in which doctors and nurses— pre\iously scrubbed— are sterile-gowned. Food, anything needed for the care of the patient, books, and newspapers are sterilized and passed through a special port. The bed and other furnishings themseh'es are autoclaxed hospital

before the patient glass screen,

is

mo\ed

in.

behind which there

Msitors talk to the patient through a is

also a tele\ision set to help the pa-

tient pass the wear>' hours.

The the

sterile

efiFect

room did

its

job for the Chicago

of the radiation treatment

girl.

\^"ithin

two weeks,

on her bone miirrow had begun

to wear ofi^ to the point \\here she could return to her o\\'n room, though some precautions still had to be observed. She also began drug treatment designed to prevent a full recovery of the bone marrow and to keep antibody production at a relati\el\^ low level. Experience has shown

that this will protect the kidney against rejection, yet pro\ide protection

against infection.

Three months

woman,

left

specialist

after the operation, the patient,

the hospital to return to Chicago,

was able

to take over the task of

now

a blooming

where

young

a kidney-disease

watching her and of regulating

her drug dosage to keep the kidney functioning. Actually, she could not yet be counted a "cure." finally

accepted

b>-

the

It

may

take a year before a grafted kidney

is

body and the drug regimen can be abandoned.

204

Leonard Engel, Kenneth Brodney This has been indicated not only by experience with the small successful kidney graft patients so far, but also

a kidney

is

by

grafted into a dog, the graft will succeed only

ceives X-ray or drug treatment at the time of operation

ment

is

number

studies of dogs.

and

if if

the

dog

drug

of

When re-

treat-

continued for eight to ten months. After that, the alien kidney

appears to be accepted and antibody-suppression treatment can be

dis-

continued.

The important ing procedure

and

is

point, however,

is

now managed. As

not precisely

time goes on,

how it

the kidney graft-

will

become simpler

can already be discerned. Thus, investigators at the University of Minnesota recently found that mice can be induced to accept skin grafts without injection of donor cells at birth, without easier. Signs of this

X-ray treatment, and without antibody-suppressing drugs; repeated

in-

from the donor strain over a period of a dozen weeks or so will do the job. It is probable that correspondingly simple methods of carrying out grafting will be developed for man. The real point is that a new medical advance with profound and revolutionary implications is rapidly emerging from the trial stage. Experiments looking toward the transplantation of nerves, lungs, stomach, intestine, liver, ovaries, and endocrine glands, in addition to kidneys, are under way. Some must soon begin to achieve success. Such accomplishments will provide a critical test of men's attitudes toward themselves and each other. Someday, it may be possible to use animal tissues and organs for human grafting. For a considerable time, however, tissues for grafting will have to come from living human donors or, where possible (in any event, in the case of one-of-a-kind organs), from cadavers. Even removal of segments of skin or use of blood from the dead is still repugnant to many people— a circumstance reflected in the many laws that raise obstacles to the use of cadaver material. As to organs from living donors, giving a kidney is not the same as giving blood; a kidney will not grow back. Still, as a New York specialist recently remarked, "When kidneys can be transplanted, two kidneys jections of killed cell material

are a luxury."

The need

How

for organs

and

tissues will almost surely outstrip the sup-

who

gets what? What does the doctor do about the patient who would benefit from a transplant but who has another disease and a poor life expectancy? Is one justified in asking or ply.

does one decide

permitting someone to give up a major internal organ for such a patient?

How much

is one justified in doing to keep a particular individual alive? These questions have a familiar ring; they resemble many that have been raised by other recent developments in medicine. Whatever one may think now, however, the significant answers can come only on a case-to-case and day-to-day basis as tissue and organ transplantation becomes an established part of surgery and such problems are encountered

205

Biological Sciences in real situations.

general terms.

make

it

But

and Medicine

not too early to think of these problems in of the past year in kidney grafting

it is

The developments

be upon us quickly enough.

clear that transplantation surgery will

Cold and ultracold

in

medicine

heart surgery, patients are frequently cooled down to a body temperature of 85° to 80°-some 13° to 18° below normal. The rationale

In

of the procedure, which is called hypothermia, is simple. During heart operations— unless the operation can be carried out without interrupting the heart for more than a brief moment— oxygenated blood must be sup-

plied to the patient's body, especially to such critical tissues as the brain,

by a heart-lung machine. Lowering the body temperature reduces the volume of oxygenated blood needed and greatly simplifies both the construction and operation of the heart-lung machine. Now, medicine is making two other highly novel uses of cold. One is the treatment of ulcers by freezing the stomach solid. The other is the use (temperature:

of liquid nitrogen as a

new

— 196°C.)

species of surgical "knife."

aid, tissues

may

With

its

be destroyed in place easy removal by conven-

either

or frozen solid for tional surgery.

The

ulcer treatment originated in the Uni-

Minnesota laboratory of Dr. Owen Wangensteen, one of the world's most disH. tinguished medical teachers. It promises an

versity of

extremely simple means of treating intractable cases of that widespread badge of modem man, the peptic ulcer. Hitherto, intractable ulcers have required surgery that could even involve (with not at all happy results) removal of the stomach. Now, many patients are being healed by nothing more complicated than swallowing a balloon through which a DR. OWEN H. WANGENSTEEN WrTH GASTRIC FREEZING UNIT Many patients are being healed

by swallowing a balloon through which a freezing solution

is

circulated

freezing solution

is

circulated for forty-five

minutes to an hour. Peptic ulcer the stomach or

is

a result of self-digestion of

duodenum

(the

first

the small intestine after the stomach)

part of

by the

stomach's digestive juices.

In keeping with a long continued interest in the ulcer problem, several years ago Dr.

Wangensteen investigated the effect of temperaHe found their activity greatly

ture on the activity of digestive juices.

decreased at lowered temperatures and, in at

fact,

halted almost completely

temperatures near freezing. The finding was the basis for a

206

new

:

Leonard Engel, Kenneth Brodney

1

', which we ascribe to matter. Beyond the constant conjunction of similar objects, and the consequent inference from one to the other, we have no notion of any necessity or connexion" {Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, Vol. 35, p. 479a). nature,

241

Philosophy and Religion

Analytic ontology Blanshard's book is a carefully argued defense

of a metaphysical posi-

world is a completely intelligible system that reason can eventually hope to explore. Comparable in importance is a brief volume of a very different stamp, Herbert W. Schneider's Woodbridge Lectures on Ways of Being: Elements of Analytic Ontology. These lectures are crammed with a wealth of original and suggestive ideas that bear serious pondering. But though they are full of acute criticisms of other positions on a wide variety of specific issues, both many of those held in the classic tradition of Aristotelian ontology and many of the more novel ideas explored in our century, these criticisms are not developed '

tion already familiar-that the

now in fashion, but rather thrown off suggestively and inquiring mind. Blanshard's careful arguments call for painstaking examination and appraisal; Schneider's insights demand rigorous thinking through and further exploration. This may for many deprive them of the immediate appeal they might possess if more fully worked out. But they are the product of long years of meditation and reflection by an independent mind with a gift for new perspectives, for seeing the ways of the world and their relations in new ways. The allusive quality of Schneider's exposition, however, his pointing to rather than fully spelling out the further consequences of what he sees clearly, in the detailed analysis

for the perceptive

and his

him

of the considerations that lead

many

summarize

cult to

make

to reject traditional views,

stimulating suggestions, both critical and constructive, as as

diffi-

the elaborated arguments of the two previous

thinkers.

who long taught at Columbia, is neither a British analyst He is working rather with a full awareness of the classic

Schneider,

nor an

idealist.

tradition that

began with

Aristotle.

modifications of that tradition ation,

whose

But he

made by

naturalistic analysis of

is

also the heir of the critical

the great figures of the last gener-

what there

is

tried to carry

ex-

its

Hobbes, ploration further. He acknowledges For Dewey. Woodbridge, and George Santayana, Peirce, Frederick J. E. in the world him, ontology is the attempt of man to orient himself in indebtedness to Aristotle,

which he finds himself. what it means to be.

It sets

forth

from

Aristotle's original question of

Analytic ontology presupposes that there is a substantial body of information on what there is and what there is not, and it accepts such facts as its starting point in trying to determine what can be said about being in general. What can be said about the ways in which various beings happen to be? And can this be said systematically without going beyond .

.

.

the limits of a factual inquiry?

The

analysis or orientation Schneider

is

contribution to this information. "Its aim

242

upon the makes no new

trying to provide rests

factual knowledge gathered by the various sciences; is

to

it

put things of

all sorts

into

John Herman Randall,

some kind

of order;

Jr.

away of individual beings acHow, and in what different ways,

primarily a filing

it is

cording to their proper fields of being." can things be said to be? But Schneider is working not merely in the

classic tradition of Aristotle

and its further exploration in our century. He has also been impressed by the way the existentialists have shown a renewed concern with the "how" of being, as contrasted with the rather diflFerent question to which Aristotle so soon shifted, the "what" of being, what it means to be a being. To be sure, they have concentrated on how being appears in man, in human "existence," and Schneider does not share this narrow focus on

human

existence; man's situation involves his relations to

many

other

and by beginning with a study of how these other beings exist we may hope to get a more accurate perspective on man's own type of being. But Schneider nevertheless finds many of the questions and distinctions of the existentialists illuminating, and he tries to make use of them in his larger exploration of the different ways of being encountered in the world. Cutting out, then, the "anthropocentric methods of analysis" (the existentialists' starting with being as it is exhibited in man), he attempts to extend these questions and distincH^^^^™ tions to all the ways of being, and to incorporate them into the naturalistic ontology stemming from Aristotle. Here is one of the few instances of genuine contact between two of our different critical philosophies. For Schneider, Heidegger is not the author of a beings,

m

new

gospel, but the source of suggestive ideas

be used Fundamental

that properly interpreted can rich ontological analysis.

conviction that the world

each of

new

is

to enis

his

changing, that

generation has to undertake the task

orientation

afresh,

and that there may

hence be objective reasons why ontology needs to be revised and rewritten. The problem he has been long reflecting upon is "what Herbert W. Schneider it now means to be in the world as it now is." Schneider agrees with Aristotle that there is no single way in which things can be said to be.^ Instead, he finds three basic, irreducible ways or "dimensions" of being: natural, cultural, and formal. But he departs from tradition in finding no "cosmology," no structure of the world as a Some things are 3 "There are many senses in which a thing may be said to 'be'. said to be because they are substances, others because they are affections of substance, others because they are a process towards substance, or destructions or privations or quahties of substance, or productive or generative of substance, or of things which are relative to substance, or negations of one of these things or of substance itself" (Aristotle, Metaphysics, Vol. 8, p. 522b). .

243

.

.

Philosophy and Religion whole, that would

Our world

other.

make is

how

clear

these three

ways are related

not in that sense "intelligible." There

is

no

to each

map

of

no science of the whole world. "I have been unable to find a privileged place where I could get a panoramic view of the world from the outside. I have done the best I could to describe as much as I could from the inside, where the view is not too good." Schneider is thus expressing what we have called the pluralistic the world as a whole, for there

is

all our critical philosophies of experience today. He oflFers an analytic ontology, not a speculative metaphysics. The world lends itself to many human perspectives from within. But

conclusion of

while nature, culture, and structure are found together in countless ways in the world,

the systems and structures which we discover in the world no evidence that they all are parts of a single system. ... as we follow the diversified ways in which things and systems are together we do not arrive at a total system. Totality is a purely denotative term and There is no totalizing process, no impHes no systematic structure. summing up of incommensurables. The world is not a sum of beings but a receptacle in which diverse beings mingle in an indescribable com-

despite there

all

is

.

.

.

patibility.

Things might possibly constitute a systematic unity; to the best of our knowledge they actually do not. Nor is the world, if not a system, a community, as cosmologists like Whitehead have argued, a network of communication systems. Anything in the world is apt to be involved in all three ways of being; but while

all

things together are in the world, they are not in communication.

Schneider rejects also the notion of levels or stages of being, of which he takes Nicolai Hartmann's elaborate

scheme

of the "ontology of

emer-

gent evolution," a pattern popular a generation ago, as a sophisticated illustration.

This

may

well be a transcription of the varied aspects of

being in man, but it is both anthropomorphic and explains nothing. After paying his respects to the "quest for Being"— reality is where we start

our analysis, not where

we

surd, inappropriate, idolatrous

The

arrive, and the cult of "Being" is "aband empty form"— Schneider concludes:

is exhibited here and now, and it is not a struccannot be told, it must be admitted, for it precedes all analysis. ... In short, being is no fit object of criticism or praise, and hence, the only useful kind of ontology is analytic, tentative, piecemeal.

unity of the world

tural unity. It

Schneider starts by trying to clear the ground. His first chapter, "Logic and Ontologic," examines the subtle relations between the formulation of how things can be said to be, and how they really are, with all its dialectical puzzles and all the linguistic entanglements into which men have fallen. His aim is to clarify ontological analysis by freeing it from dependence upon logical "necessities." Ontology, to be sure, must use

244

John Herman Randall,

}r.

language and logical forms; but its commitments to logic are no different from those of any other concrete scientific analysis. Schneider goes as far as possible toward an ontology without logic. Above all, its analysis needs no foundation or "grounding" in any necessary truth arrived at by transforming logical certainty into existential subject matter. Traditionally such a grounding has depended on some form of the ontological argument;

has seemed too naive to take being for granted as

it

given factually and as open for investigation. This leads to an acute criticism of two versions of the argument for some "necessary being": the

simple form in Aristotle (see Metaphysics, Vol. 8, pp. 601b-603b), and Descartes's argument for the existence of himself and of God ( see Meditations, Vol. 31, pp. 77c-89a).

A

dle, that

either

is

or

Finally, there has

is

not,

Nor does the logical law of excluded midapply to ontology.*

been a search

in the tradition for a principle of

individuation. Schneider defends individuality as an ultimate category of ontological analysis: individuals are not

formed by uniting un-indi-

viduated elements, for they are themselves ultimate elements of being.

With

Aristotle

he agrees that being

individuated. "It

is

is

more reason-

able to accept individuality as a basic fact, than to invent stories about its

origin." This leads to a suggestive analysis of the interplay of indi-

and

viduality

relationality as facts of being generally, of "things,"

of existence, all of

which are always

relative to

some

and

context.

ways of being gets its suggesand separations. Nature is basic, Natural being presupposes no other kind;

Schneider's analysis of his three basic tiveness

from

his original groupings

foimdational for being it is

itself.

the dynamic matrix and source of

tainer or "receptacle" within

be found a variety of natural

compound Not

all

orientation;

which

all

all

that moves. It remains the con-

events happen. Within

"fields," so that

it

are to

every natural being has a

they jointly provide the context for processes.

natural processes are alike; there are at least as

many

types as

there are natural sciences. Schneider distinguishes five categorial "fields"

The most general is the space-time frame for motions and measurements. What has continuum, a universal been known as the electromagnetic field is the general realm of interactions. Then there is the field of natural history, the endurance of natural beings that have careers, both inorganic and organic. Organisms exhibit needs, which lead to selective appropriation and effort, and to the or

modes

of natural conditioning.

dimension of feelings and values. Where there is life, there is nature; but there is also elementary selection and valuation. Values come into being in the course of nature, but they lead on to the arts of culture. 4 The law of excluded middle was originally enunciated by Aristotle: "In the case of a pair of contradictories, either when the subject is universal and the propositions are of a universal character, or when it is individual, as has been said, one of the two must be true and the other false" (On Interpretation, Vol. 8, p. 28a-b).

245

Philosophy and Religion

we come

and habit formation which are the rooting of intelligence in nature. Somewhere there dawns along the path of learning the ability and then the habit to look ahead and to become aware of where the use of means is leading. This is the field of finality, of natural teleology, of the means-end relation. All this SchneiLastly,

to those processes of learning

der includes within natural being.

own comment

His

runs:

have distinguished the basic fields and processes in ways which cross the conventional distinctions between man and nature, for I have put man into nature, which is his original habitat. I have linked inorganic with organic "careers," whereas living processes are usually distinguished sharply from the inorganic. I have associated many aspects of human nature, including the primitive forms of learning, consciousness, and intelligence with those of other animals, and reserved only the more organized, systematic, and methodical developments of art and mind as cultural opI

erations or experience.

Turning from the human animal to the human person and from natural processes to actions, operations, or procedures, Schneider encounters a

new way ture.

of being,

Human

which

in contrast to nature

operations are

is

conveniently called cul-

work and production, instrumental and

perimental, a use of natural resources as resources for

human

ex-

culture.

Schneider uses "experience" as the process of learning by operating, it with the Greek notion of techne or "art" as meaning ac-

equating

the worker who does a human job, who operates sucway, he gives the name "person." Personality is the outcome of cultural being. Persons are made, not born. The child acquires a "mind" in the process of "appropriating" the operations of its particular cultural field. When it has a "mind of its own," it is able not merely to do its own work, but to understand what is implied in participation in a culture. No individual can confer personality on itself; a person is

quired

skill.

To

cessfully in this

necessarily a social being.

The progress

of a person

and

of a culture

depends on four elements:

the funding of memory, the vesting of interests, the organization of

The funding of memory is the way that the person's interests, ideas, and imagination can have at hand capital, gleaned from experience, as resources for meeting new problems. Then his interests must ideas,

and the

vitality of the imagination.

relating of the past to the present in such a

be vested

must be specialization, dimust generate ideas, be conceptualized, symbolized, and communicated. Ideas take the form of jobs, tasks, problems, plans, methods, enterprises. Lastly, interests must be nourished by imagination. Against the background of this psychology of experience, Schneider in relation to his institutions; there

vision of labor, integration, selection.

The

interests

distinguishes four basic structures or fields— four dimensions of culture— within which cultures take on their varied patterns and achieve their

246

John Herman Randall,

Jr.

They are historical being, moral being, coexistence, and communion. What does it mean to be an historical being? This is something more than to be a part of the general course of natural events. In

varied works.

analyzing this more, Schneider

is

led to delineate historical time, the liv-

ing or funded past, and the anticipated future, and concludes that "hav-

ing a mind" and "being historical" are two ways of describing the same fact of experience.

Moral being, or the realm

of obligation,

transactions. Obligations are generated

is

the field of institutional

by the

conflicting

demands

of

out of these conflicts there emerge standards for

intersecting groups;

membership and general norms

for transactions.

The

primary- function of

not the definition of the good or of values, but the specification of the conditions required for co-operation; moral rules define the social conditions under which any value can be pursued. Any organized moraht)'

is

group develops a moral structure

Obhgations are social, is independent

of obligations.

institutional beings; they are quite objecti\-e, their reality-

any person to recognize them. They are the matrix within which other aspects of cultural being function, the public framework of transaction. Schneider is at his most original in this theory of of the willingness of

objective

obligations,

which

is

an

institutionalized

development

Hobbes (see Leviathan, Vol. 23, pp. 86c-96b). The third dimension of cultural being, "coexistence,"

is

of

the field of

co-operative production in institutions, of the diversified, unsystematized, ununified arts and sciences in which mankind has preserved and method-

developed what it has learned to do, to think, and to cherish, the varied forms of man's productive work through which he learns. They ically

all exist

together in proliferation; their only unity

interests in

each personality. In such choice

Under the fourth dimension, which

is

lies

is

the integration of

the most real freedom.

communion,

or imaginative per-

sonal relations, are grouped friendship, piety, or devotion to endangered

goods and ends (known today as "commitment"), and communion with spirits— invisible, haunting persons, those once living or purely imaginary

and

fictitious.

The systems

of formal being derive from the process of formulation, which takes place both in the realm of natural processes and in that of cultural operations; and there is an interplay between activities and forms, systems, and structures. But formal systems have a way of being of their own, categorically unlike others. They are found in great profusion. Schneider tries to exhibit a few basic types that show they are

not limited to conceptual or theoretical systems alone, or restricted to the world of discourse, logic, or mind.

He

starts

with the

latter,

"rea-

son" or the systems of ideas which arise in communication. Ideas are by their nature systematic

tions to nature

and

and

interrelated; they display both actual rela-

to culture,

and formal systems 247

of

symbolism and im-

Philosophy and Religion plication.

a

fifth

Some make

assertions about matters of fact

system of "evidence" or knowledge

of

and thus enter

into

nonformal beings, a body of

in a system of evidence, which structures of evidence in other on to rules out "self-evidence." This leads

sciences or truth. Facts are always

made

arts like the law.

But such forms of "reason" exist side by side with other formal structures. There is an analysis of the different forms in the arts. There are the formal fitnesses that characterize "decencies" and deontologies— here Schneider explores the "rational" or formal aspect of moral being very acutely, of right and wrong rather than interests and values. The kind of "ought to be" here involved is merely the completion of an existent situation

which

is

determinative or demanding, so that the "ought"

already contained in what

is

is

there. If an objective or situational calcu-

can be generalized or systematized, a forpossible. In moral relations one begins with given

lus of what-needs-to-be-done

mal science of duty is obstacles and tries to discover the rules of the game. Such situational determinism is a particular form of "objective relativism" in a realistic survey of systems and of formal being. Schneider extends it to the formalities of religious celebration, and to harmonies in general. He is led to a reinterpretation of the myth of natural law, which he takes as a symbol of the determining powers of cultural being. "Despite nature's neutrality, man's cultural environment and conditioning are such that his moral field, that his

is,

the very structure of his situations,

movements and

decisions."

The

frequently determining for

is

existence of such objective situational

structures throws doubt on the gulf

between the

"is"

and the "ought,"

wholly the exercise of freedom. "No human determinations are ever purely external or purely internal, wholly fated or wholly free," Schneider concludes, "We have at last been compelled to think of our world of forms in pluralistic terms. We hardly even dream of

and upon the moral

life as

a universal structure or form of forms.

The information

of things

is

rela-

tional, relative, multidimensional." It

has hardly been possible here to do more than suggest something of

Schneider's originality of approach, his fresh

ways

of seeing things to-

gether and yet as distinguished from other things. His use of many of the characteristic ideas of recent American philosophy is apparent. And it

is

hoped

that something has

been indicated

of

how, by emphasizing

the situational character and general objective relativism they share, he has been able to incorporate into a pluralistic and naturalistic ontology many of the insights of the existentialists.

Major translations by side with the books from three very different traditions that have just been examined, there have appeared English translations of

Side

two others that

in their

new

dress are

bound

248

to

make

a significant

if

slow

John Herman Randall,

Jr.

impact upon philosophizing in Enghsh. For they are major classics in the Continental philosophy since World War I, in the currents of thought that in both Germany and France pushed the phenomenological analysis

Edmund

of

Husserl on into those positions loosely grouped together as

existentialist.

Martin Heidegger

is

the acknowledged fountainhead of this philo-

sophical stream. Until 1962 there existed in English only versions of

some

on Greek philosophers and German Romantic poets. These, even taken together with various brief preliminary sketches for the ontological analysis of being he has long promised but never worked out, hardly suflBced to explain his impressive influence. And in any event they have seemed to many to suggest a significant change away from of his shorter essays

was originally found so stimulating. Last year there appeared a translation of his Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics, which, by coming to terms with the major figure in the German tradition, serves as a kind of introduction to Heidegger's position— a better one than to Kant's own thought, it has been held. Now at last appears Heidegger's epoch-making book itself. Being and the position that

Time, published as Sein und Zeit in 1927. This is a study of the strucit appears in man, in finite human existence. It was originally announced as preliminary to the analysis of being itself, a task

ture of being as

Heidegger has not yet achieved.

It

contains his analysis of the

human

and temporality. Sein und been held to be virtually untranslatable— even into German, it was said. For it manipulates the German language in the way Hegel attempted, and in the way Aristotle manipulated Greek. The present translators, John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson, have wrestled long with their thorny problem; they provide a lexicon of terms, and many

situation in terms of anxiety, care or concern,

Zeit has long

footnotes that try to explain Heidegger's subtle linguistic distinctions.

How

far they

lish, like

will

have succeeded

depend on

The

in

the further question of

making Heidegger intelligible in Engfar Heidegger is himself intelligible,

how

one's ultimate philosophical judgment.

is Maurice Merleau-Ponty's Phenomenolowhich appeared in 1945 as Phenomenologie de la Pergy ception. Merleau-Ponty, who died in 1961, was the outstanding univer-

other major translation

of Perception,

sity

teacher in France in the revolution in philosophy generally taken to

initiated by Jean-Paul Sartre. There is more of Husserl and method of careful descriptive analysis than of Heidegger in this book, and its author was a leader in popularizing the phenomenological method

have been his

in

French philosophizing. This volume, starting out

tion of our perceptual experience as

plex that experience intellectualism

is

it

is" exhibits

as "a direct descrip-

how much more com-

than either traditional empiricism or traditional

and rationalism have found

it,

and brings a wealth of

carefully reinterpreted psychological experimentation to support

249

its

de-

,

Philosophy and Religion scription. It uses

its

account of "pre-objective" and non-reflective experi-

ence to furnish a detailed criticism of the "classical prejudices" and assumptions of the theories of knowledge of minates, in

good

modem

philosophy.

It cul-

existentialist fashion, in a dis-

cussion of temporality and of freedom.^

Both Being and Time and Phenomenology of

Perception are established books, which

have long had an opportunity to exhibit their seminal character. They have been unusually fertile in provoking and sustaining further philosophical developments within the currents of thought in which they are so fundamental. They have aroused interest in the problems they raise, in their method of formulating, and perhaps above all in their method for dealing with those problems. Both are at bottom fundamentally critical studies. They appeal to a fresh consultation with and analysis of man's direct experience of the world in which he finds himself. They have thus iniMartin Heidegger

tiated a reconstruction of the traditions out of

which they sprang; though it is instructive to observe that Heidegger, like Husserl himself, has shown a tendency to fall back on an enlarged transcendental philosophy with marked analogies to that of Kant, and that in the end Merleau-Ponty makes central a reexamination of the Cartesian cogito. As such, both books furnish gateways into the Continental enterprise of radical rebuilding and extension of their earlier traditions. Both speak in an idiom of their own, a mixture of their particular tradition, of the language of Husserl's phenomenology, and of the authors'

own

novel distinctions.

Will they prove capable of making a real impact on English-speaking philosophizing,

whose language and methods have been and

still

They

are both extraordinarily difficult books, subtle

and elabo-

different?

are so

rate analyses of experience approached, inevitably (despite their professions of intention to

be resolutely descriptive and presuppositionless )

through a framework of traditional assumptions and unquestioned distinctions. The first step has been taken in putting them into English. The more fundamental translation calls for philosophic minds with the imagination to see

how both

end a common enterprise Eugene

traditions are

now engaged

in

what

is

in the

of critical reconstruction.

F. Kaelin, of Wisconsin, in his

An

Existentialist Aesthetic, gives the

detailed examination and commentary in English on Merleau-Ponty, his critical enterprise with the views of the Americans James, G. H.

Dewey.

250

first

comparing Mead, and

John Herman Randall,

Jr.

Meaning, theory of knowledge,

and philosophy

of science

much of the best work of the analytic philhas been done in clarifying particular points, or dealing with specialized themes, in the general field of logic and its interrelation. For the same reason, there can here be mentioned only a few of the the nature of the case,

Inosophers

more

interesting books that

phors lysts

is

a

welcome

working

in

have appeared

collection of papers

America,

Max

in this field.

Models and Meta-

by the dean

of linguistic ana-

Black of Cornell, his

first

since the Prob-

lems of Analysis in 1954. Black shows how his methods can clarify and make precise issues in the philosophy of language, the theory of meaning, the logic of

Here are

metaphors and models, induction, causation, and time.

his study of the linguistic relativity of B. L.

Whorf and

his

presidential address on language and reality, in both of which he concludes, "No roads lead from grammar to metaphysics." The Diversity of

Meaning of of meaning

L.

J.

Cohen

is

the most thorough and comprehensive study

since the classic

Meaning

Meaning of C. K. Ogden and the few analytic philosophers who of

Cohen is one of on the work of the linguists. Peter T. Geach, in Reference and Generality, examines the form of meaning so central in discussion since Russell's doctrine of denoting, applying formal logic to arguments in everyday language, and considering medieval views on the modes of reference as well as the recent views centering on Russell. The old epistemological problems continue to haunt some thinkers. I.

A. Richards in 1923.

rely heavily

Here might be mentioned two sharply contrasting studies of perception. D. M. Armstrong, an Australian philosopher, has followed up his Perception and the Physical World (1961) with a study of Bodily Sensations. Armstrong holds the view of "direct realism" as to perception, which he defends by refuting with "conceptual analysis" both the representative theory and phenomenalism: what we immediately perceive is something physical, which exists independently of our awareness of it. In Bodily Sensations he argues that the sole immediate objects of bodily and tactual perception are the thermal and spatial properties of our own body, and physical objects in contact with it. But in the end Armstrong so qualifies his position by extending the scope of perceptual illusion in the face of physics that it is hard to see what is left of it. We seem to be back with what the Americans called Neo-realism, now, however, acutely defended by the latest methods of analysis. John W. Yolton, in Thinking and Perceiving, is, in sharp contrast, a convinced dualist; he is the foremost American student of Locke. By careful criticism of Dewey and G. H. Mead, as well as of Merleau-Ponty and Ryle, from all of whom he nevertheless draws much, Yolton concludes that images, meanings, significations, and concepts are "mental entities." There is indeed a continuity between thought and action, but 251

Philosophy and Religion a physiological process remains of a different order of reality from a mental process. The logic of mental words must be joined with the

Thinking thus appears as an emergent process. Yolton relies on psychological theory and experimentation as well as on philosophical reflection; but he is driven to work out a theory of philosophical explanation that makes not deducibility but "intelligibility" the basic feature of the logic of explanation. The understanding the philosopher seeks through his theories is not primarily empirical: it is metaontology of mental

entities.

be verified, but it is none the less explanatory. It must be constructed in close contact with scientific data, but in its explanations it goes beyond them. Thus philosophy and the sciences can fruitfully work together, without philosophy being restricted to methodo-

physical. It cannot

on the techniques of the sciences. What both Armstrong and Yolton are attempting is now coming to be called "philosophical psychology," and seems to be growing rapidly in poplogical or logical observations

ularity.

In the philosophy of science there has been no writing so outstanding as Ernest Nagel's

The Structure

Thomas The Structure

of Science (1961).

his contribution to the Unified Science series.

Revolutions,

S.

in

primarily concerned to deny

is

the view that scientific knowledge tive,

Kuhn,

of Scientific

and that one

scientific

the logical sense on

its

cumula-

is

theory builds in

predecessors. Kuhn,

after reading Wittgenstein, has discovered ob-

jective relativism,

and

realizes that alternative

scientific theories

may

present us with alterna-

views of nature, each one of them being an acceptable view of what nature is like, if it does not prove to be inconsistent or incomplete. Karl Popper has added a volume of stutive

dies.

Conjectures

appUes

basic

his

method suggested

and

Refutations,

conception in his title to

of

which

scientific

many

topics

ranging from the status of science and of metaphysics, which he does not take to be meaningless, principles. Karl Popper

public

opinion and liberal

opposition in the Vienna Circle, developed in his

edition,

to

Popper, once the leader of the

Logic of Scientific Discovery (German 1959), the anti-Baconian view that

1934; English translation,

science proceeds by conjectures, anticipations of nature,

and by tentative which are then subjected to critical tests and refutation. They may well be shown to be false, but not to be true or even probable, in guesses,

the sense of any calculus of probabihties.

252

To be

of

any value a hypoth-

John Herman RondalL esis

must be thus

principle falsifiable;

in

step forward. This sense of liberal

and the advocate

human

fallibility

Jr.

is

always a

made Popper

a political

refutation

its

has

of "piecemeal engineering" in social matters.

has also led him to find congenial the similar strain in Anglo-American philosophizing, and he has been learning much from Peirce, as the It

theor)' of degrees of truth

emphasized

in this

volume seems to suggest.

Ethics that The notion the concepts

ethical theory

primarily concerned with the anah'-

is

sis of men use in their everyday decisions and judgments has pretty much dominated English philosophical reflection on

ethics in this century. It was made central Cambridge philosopher G. E. Moore in

in the Principio Ethico of the

339a-436c) spends so

much

outset of his discussions;

At Oxford it received whose Ethics (Vol. 9, pp.

1903.

strong support from the study of Aristotle,

time on just such a careful analysis at the

and

as

Oxford idealism declined

in the 1920's,

element of Aristotle came to the fore there too, though the particular concepts emphasized, like the Right, carried the lingering odor of an earlier Kantianism. When the full force of linguistic analysis this initial

was

felt at

Oxonians. of the

Oxford,

The

it

found

fertile

soil

among

the classically trained

writings of the English analysts on ethics bear something

stamp of an incipient Aristotelianism brought up

to date. \\'ith the

spread of these methods to the United States, it becomes important to understand what these moral philosophers are trying to do and how they do

it.

We now

possess an excellent balanced introduction to this whole by an American, the late Sidney Zink, in The Concepts of Ethics. Though his book does not display the originality, for instance, of Schneider's treatment of moral being and obligation, it explains lucidly the issues that have been raised and the various positions taken on them; and by its moderation and sanit}^ in arriving at his own adjudication, it is a persuasive recommendation for the analytic approach to the under-

discussion

standing of the moral

life.

Zink

is

concerned to elucidate "the way

we

think" about such things as value, obligation, and responsibilit)-; in doing so he has method of

we

way we

talk" about them. "The by a conjoint analysis of \\'hat think, the dominant philosophical "common sense," was emphasized

to refer continually to "the

treating philosophical problems

think and

how we

speak

is,

I

method today." The way we think, by Moore, the way we talk by Wittgenstein. The latter, Zink judges, is most important where puzzles have been generated through the looseness and ambiguity of language, as on the questions of responsibility and "free wiU." But common opinion is often confused; there remains great need of clarification of the basic ethical concepts, through careful analysis of their meanings.

253

Philosophy and Religion purely theoretical matter. For while such analysis need not take a stand on the more particular questions for ethical decision, the analyst cannot avoid doing so on the general issues that are of great practical importance, like whether value judgments can lay claim to

Nor

is

this a

is no such thing as a "meta-ethics" quite pure there cannot be a "pure" ethics. commitments: of practical useful term than "good," Zink starts by more a "value" Considering construct a "science" of values, but cannot notion. We the analyzing

being knowledge. There

value statements are not merely "emotive"; they refer to something, a knowable feature of things. As Moore held, value is an objective property of things, but

it is

not in any clear sense simple, intrinsic, or "non-

natural." Men indeed disagree about values, but they admit they are often mistaken, even though there is no general test for the truth of value

judgments. Values are relative to the situation, and are found only in relation to some sentient being. Zink reaches his conclusion, that value is a property about which we attempt to make true judgments, only after a long consideration of all the objections

By is

a similar series

of careful arguments, he

a single sort of thing, like the satisfaction

Such reductionist views or

and arguments against it. view that value

rejects the

of desire,

or pleasure.

assert the presence of different species

at once dimensions of that one thing, for which they provide no

principle of ranking. Zink thus maintains a

clear

compromise between

"ex-

treme relativism," which holds that value judgments deal with no objective property, and "extreme objectivism," which holds that value can be known with the precision of a "science"— a quite Aristotelian position.

On

the central issue of obligation, Zink holds that there are true judg-

ments of value that provide the ground for determining true judgments of obligation. By a detailed examination of the arguments of H. A. Prichard, Sir W. D. Ross, and the other Oxford "deontologists," who maintained that the Right is a distinct ethical category, quite independent of its tendency to maximize the good, he defends the view of Moore that the good can always be used to criticize rules of obligation and particular obligations, and argues for the flexibility of moral rules. When Zink comes to consider moral decision, the moral deliberation that leads up to it, and the other concepts involved— responsibility, will, choice, and intention— what is of greatest interest is not the judicious conclusions at which his analysis arrives, but the method of examining

what men would say only

an

illuminating

in a variety of test

illustration

of

examples. His use of

the

clarifying

power

it is

of

not

such

how Aristotelian has been the atmosphere whole recent discussion, from his opening agreement on: "There is such a thing as moral reasoning, but, as Aristotle said, the judgment must ultimately rest with 'perception,' " that is, with "an original

analytic techniques. It suggests of this

254

John Herman Randall, estimation of

what

is

good." Zink sums up

:

Jr.

"We

hold persons to be under

obhgation only for acts which satisfy the conditions of responsibility.

We hold

them responsible when they act and that for which we hold them obligated and responsible is the realization of what is good." .

.

,

intentionally;

Like

the ethical analysts, Zink attempts

all

up the puzzles about the "freedom of the will." Both the libertarian and the extreme determinist are wrong. We can find no power to clear

of "free will." "Willing" in the sense of trying is

possible, but

The

is

neither

sponsible;

not necessary to being reis

the ability to choose.

fact that our acts are all

caused does not

relieve us of responsibility for them:

who

cause them. "The cause

is

the person in one of his aspects. is

the

sum

presses (or

is

And

we

The person

of his general tendencies

cular intentions.

it is

the person, or

and

parti-

so far as his action ex-

caused by) these, so far

it

Sidney Zink

is

voluntary and responsible." Zink's particular discussion illustrates

how

the analytic treatment of

responsibility

and "freedom," so central a theme

philosophy,

a combination of an Aristotelian concrete analysis of the

is

in

recent

ethical

conditions of moral deliberation and choice, with a rejection of any

we find events subsumable under causal laws, into a universal determinism. Like the others, Zink

"metaphysical extension" of the fact that

Hume, that the contrary of every matter of fact "There are no grounds for claiming to know, in the case of all choices or actions, that no other action was possible. There is not even any ground for claiming to know, in the case of any particular choice or action, that no other choice or action was possible. We just cannot know this much." In this fashion the analysts arrive at an empirical understanding of the human freedom necessary to make moral accepts the principle of

is

possible."

action

and moral judgments of obligation and responsibility meaningful,

a freedom reached more pretentiously by other philosophers.

From

this

turn to the

comprehensive discussion of the concepts of ethics

new book by one

of the leaders in the application of

we

can Oxford

possible; because it can never imply 6 "The contrary of every matter of fact is a contradiction, and is conceived by the mind with the same facility and distinctness, as if ever so conformable to reality. That the sun will not rise tomorrow is no less intelligible a proposition, and implies no more contradiction than the affirmation, that it will rise" (Hume, Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, Vol. .

35,

p.

458b-c).

255

.

.

.

Philosophy and Religion in which moral judgments are made and moral arguments carried on. Richard M. Hare, in The Language Nowell-Smith, in of Morals (1952), was a pioneer, along with P. H. this type of moral philosophy. Unhke most of the analysts, who have devoted their attention to the traditional problems of knowledge and logic, the analytic moral philosophers have taken seriously the obligation to clarify the thinking and practice of non-philosophers, and Hare's present volume is written lucidly for the layman. Where his first book dealt primarily with moral terms. Freedom and Reason goes on to examine the nature of moral arguments and reasoning. Hare begins by reformulating the tests he used before to mark off moral arguments from others. He holds that it is essential to moral terms to be both universalizable and prescriptive. Rules must be used consistently: a rule I apply to myself I must also apply to others. Moral judg-

linguistic analysis to the terms

ments, in this Kantian sense, must be capable of being universalized— though Hare provides for principles being modified and complicated.^ In defending his position Hare here makes it a logical requirement that all words be used consistently, adjectives like "green" as well as "good." And he argues strongly the familiar distinction between terms that are merely descriptive and those that are genuinely prescriptive. At the same time he holds that his own position is valid because men's desires are what they are and because they like what in fact they do like. But to speak morally, they must adopt what they like as an ideal, or advise it

as a principle.

Hare connects his theory with utilitarianism. He makes an important distinction between a morality of interests and a morality of ideals. With interests, we can secure universalization by getting a man to consider whether he would be willing to have others do to him what he is doing to them, and thus persuading him to apply his own principles to them also. But with ideals such arguments are not eflFective, for he would agree to suffer himself what he is inflicting on another in the name of the ideal. Hare has an In the

second half of the book.

illuminating discussion of the fanaticism involved in the morality of ideals,

a

very

realistic

much

in the

modern temper, and the moral

universalization

of

interests.

He

also

superiority of

discusses

with

full

problem of moral weakness, the place of imagination in moral thinking, and the rational basis of tolerance. Perhaps the most original book on ethics to appear has been the Gifford Lectures of Georg von Wright, The Varieties of Goodness. Von Wright, who studied in Helsinki under a member of the Vienna Circle, illustrations the

7 Kant asserted the necessity for the universaHzation of moral judgments in the categorical imperative: "Act only on that maxim whereby thou canst at the same time will that it should become a universal law" (Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysic of Morals, Vol. 42, p. 268d )

256

John Herman Randall,

Jr.

succeeded for a time to the chair of Wittgenstein then returned to Finland.

which

He

is

best

his previous writings in English

known

at

Cambridge, but

as a logician, the field in

have appeared; but he has always

displayed a healthy skepticism of exaggerated practical claims for formal logic.

Unhke

who have

emphasized the purely von Wright regards ethics as concerned both with the investigation of its concepts and with the practical direction of human life. Nor does he accept the dogma that denies any logical connection between describing and evaluating. He is fully acquainted with all the recent discussion in moral philosophy that Zink, for example, recounts. But again and again he takes earlier moralists, especially Aristotle, into consideration. And he does not hmit himself to the Aristotle who analyzes the language of morals. He shares also the teleological and functional views of the Greek: evaluation involves existing purposes, function, and pursuits. The goodness of instruments, for instance, is tied up essentially with the notion of those

writers

recently

theoretical function of ethical philosophy,

purpose.

With a wealth

of detailed analysis,

The

many diflFerent forms of goodness: human welfare, and various others. It is ines

as exhibiting only

And

it

is

two forms, the good

Varieties of

Goodness exam-

technical, utilitarian, medical,

a mistake to consider goodness

as

means and the good

as end.

misleading to ask the questions in general, whether value

judgments are objective or subjective, whether they can be true or false or not. The answers will vary in diflFerent contexts. They will depend upon which of the various forms of goodness is being considered, and upon how the judgment is being stated. Thus von Wright allows that first-person value judgments often contain an element of expressiveness which is neither true nor false; but even here that rarely exhausts their content. By his clear distinctions he manages to get away from the over-simplified and one-sided positions that are better suited for purposes of debate than for illumination of the complexities of a field where many diflFerent varieties of values, situations, and ways of talking are clearly involved. His examination shows how the analysts at their most fruitful are pushing their contextual analysis to constructive ends.

von Wright does not shy away in crudely men have used and stUl can employ to illuminate moral experience. He defends the use of such myths as the state of nature and the social contract, and emphasizes their logical value. One of the most interesting parts of an illuminating book is its imaginative use of logical fictions— schematically simplified communities which reveal clearly what is at stake in the practice of

As a modern

logician,

empirical fashion from the theoretical constructions

justice or injustice.

257

Philosophy and Religion Political and social philosophy has already been suggested in connection with Hare's criticism It of the fanaticism of a morahty of Utopian ideals that the current has

been running strongly toward a more modest and more "realistic" view of the complexities of human life, and the need for flexible methods of adjustment rather than absolute principles. Several thinkers coming from very different philosophical backgrounds have undertaken critiques of the moral basis of pohtical philosophy, in the interest of showing the unsatisfactory character of rooting it in absolute and inflexible principles. Sidney Hook has long been a valiant defender of democracy and its freedoms against the upholders of tradition and against modern authoritarian and totalitarian attacks. In The Paradoxes of Freedom he submits to the logic of pragmatic inquiry the very freedoms he finds essential, showing what happens to them in those civil libertarians who try to defend them as absolutes. The correlative of a particular freedom is the negation of the freedom to frustrate it. We want more than one freedom, but the fulfillment of one often leads to the frustration of others. Nothing is so stark a fact in human experience as the conflict of rights.

The prob-

one of adjusting them in particular cases. If any be taken as absolute, this obscures the need to balance them all, in terms of their consequences on the public welfare.

lem

is

Natural rights are reasonable rights, the reasonable and therefore moral goals to which all

governmental action

tries to

show

language

is

subjected.

Hook

that despite often inconsistent

was the position

this

of

Locke and

Jefferson. In the inescapable conflict of rights

and

and responsibilities, no absolute obligation save the moral obligation to be intelligent. Intelligence alone effects a reasonable adjustment, and sets limits of timing, scope, and appropriateduties,

obligations

there can be

ness. It alone

Sidney Hook

of all values

it

is

an absolute value, because is the judge of its own

alone

limitations.

Hook goes on

between democracy and judicial review, and finds grave difficulties in the views of those who have recently tried to justify such review. The authority of intelligence must be vested in democratic political processes, and cannot be delegated to any body which has power but no commensurate reto consider the serious issues in the conflict

sponsibility. Finally, Hook examines defenses of the right to civil disobedience and to revolution, and finds them a contradiction in terms

258

John Herman Randall,

Jr.

within a community that can as a whole be regarded as democratic. He grants a carefully circumscribed right to certain types of non-violent

disobedience in cases where a democracy has violated

its

own

presup-

even these cannot be taken as absolute, and are subject to the need to safeguard the whole structure of democratic society. Hook's moral foundation for human rights is the view that obligation is derived from the reflective judgment that some shared goal, purpose, or need requires the functioning of these rights, and that the goals positions, but

of a democratic community provide the context for civil rights. His fundamental contention is well argued; his particular adjustments raise rather than settle the issues, but at least he has phrased them in such a way that in specific contexts further inquiry and knowledge can be fruitfully brought to bear. It is the great merit of the pragmatic method Hook employs that when successful it manages to transform an issue

to

be debated into a problem to be inquired

into.

Whether modern demo-

cratic societies adequately provide the conditions for this transformation

remains just such a problem. Another writer on the moral basis of political philosophy, Thomas Landon Thorson of Wisconsin, attacks the broader problem of the philosophical justification of majority rule as a decision-making procedure, in

Thorson operates within a very different and analytic philosophy. He sets out to find a philosophical justification for democracy, rejecting both the metaphysical appeal to absolute standards like natural law and natural rights, and the relativistic view that no scientific choice between ultimate values can be made. This involves him in working out a conception of political philosophy that will be able to accept scientific standards and at the same time to "justify." He tries to find such a justification through seeking a model in the way recent philosophy of science justifies its fundamental assumptions. In its historical forms, in Plato, Hobbes, Locke, or Rousseau, political philosophy has always made recommendations on either the deductive model of traditional metaphysics or on the model of empirical inference from facts. It must now recognize that its ultimate political recommendations can be neither theorems in a deductive system, nor empirical hypotheses; they cannot be thus proved or demonstrated. But they can still be made rationally.

his

Logic of Democracy.

context, that of recent logical positivism

Rationality consists in deciding wisely in terms of the context of the decision.

Recommendations are "appropriate" to certain contexts; and must furnish the requisite knowledge of those contexts.

political science

But to operate at all, ultimate political choices, like those of democracy, must be binding in all contexts. How are such ultimate commitments to be made rationally? Thorson's actual defense of democratic procedure relies on Peirce's injunction based on human fallibilism: "The maxim 'Do not block the 259

Philosophy and Religion a statement of the ultimate 'must' of science." Peirce

way

of inquiry'

saw

that the very recognition of

supplies the

is

maxim

this to political philosophy.

or majority,

is

human intellectual limitations in itself human behavior, Thorson applies

that should govern

No one man, no

group, whether minority

ever justified in claiming a right to

the whole society on the grounds that

it

make

knows what the

decisions for

"right" decisions

because the "rightness" of a political decision cannot be proved its consequences cannot be predicted with certitude nor its ultimate ethical supremacy demonstrated— we are obligated to construct a decision-making procedure that will leave the way open for new ideas and social change. "Do not block the possibility of change with respect are. Just

—because

to social goals." In man's very fallibility

is

seen a rather clear-cut recom-

mendation of what is rational to do. Thorson thus sees combined in the "logic" of democracy both the empirical temper of mind and the need and room for the kind of cate-

commitment the absolutists counsel. Indeed, "the philosopher of democracy," Locke, easily combined them both. And despite his strong criticisms of the futility of absolutism, Thorson ends by defending gorical

Locke's use of the language of natural law and natural rights, as the

only terms in which in his day to express this element of commitment (see Concerning Civil Government, Vol. 35, pp. 25d-54d passim). What really doing is to defend democracy as a rational

he— and Locke— are

and it is such a "logic of recommendation" he is exploring. He ends with praise for the British and American tradition in political

faith,

thinking, as having always recognized man's intellectual inadequacies as the beginning of wisdom in politics. His own political philosophy might well be taken as the bringing of central strands in John Stuart Mill, which it so much resembles, up-to-date in the setting of analytic

philosophizing.

Hook and Thorson

are Americans.

British studies in political philosophy

sciences

makes

clear

how

A

significant

volume

of

mainly

and the philosophy of the social

the English analysts have begun to turn their

constructive purposes. In 1956 Peter Laslett and W. G. Runciman of Cambridge published a collection on Philosophy, Politics and Society, largely negative in implications, whose motto was, "Political

methods

to

philosophy

is

dead." But in 1961 H. L. A. Hart used linguistic analysis for

Concept of Law. And now a second volume of studies title comes from Laslett and Runciman, showing a new interest in political theory and the methods and results of the social sciences, and advancing toward prescriptive recommendations. Runciman himself, in "Sociological Evidence and Political Theory," argues the importance of factual studies for social policy, and Alasdair Maclntyre makes a pioneer attempt to relate the recent philosophical

positive ends in his

under the original

analysis of the conditions of

human

"action" to the research of the social

260

John Herman Randall, scientists, in

"A Mistake about Causality

consists in trying to use

an inadequate

constant conjunction, whereas in society

an action might have been other than

Jr.

in Social Science."

The mistake

Humean view of causation as much is due to human "action": an agent always has alterna-

it is,

Hence the body of ideas in a society is important as indicating the limits of action, and account must be taken of the tension between tives.

and other factors. Social ideas and policies, in a word, have ceased to be arbitrary language, and once more have a rational basis and function in genuine decision-making. the rationality of social

life

Religion

Undoubtedly is

forces

the most fundamental problem facing religions today

their sharp confrontation

secular

of

society,

with each other and with the dynamic generated by our rapidly

confrontation

a

contracting technological world. This problem of confrontation

mental, for in practical

and

it

are brought to a focus

intellectual

and philosophical,

porary situation. The great

Roman

own

characteristic

way by

is

funda-

the other problems, both so insistent in the contem-

Catholic Church, under the pressure

of imaginative leadership, tried to face its

all

it

in

calling the Sec-

ond Vatican Ecumenical Council, doubtless the most

significant

religious

event in the

Western world during the past year. With an even broader horizon, for

includes the living Paul Tillich in his

it

religions

of the Orient,

Bampton

Lectures, Christianity

and the En-

counter of the World Religions, tries to approach this central problem, and to set forth

some points all

of

view he considers decisive

attempts to deal with

in

it.

one of the most respected Protesin America, perhaps the thinker who today comes closest to serving as an intellectual spokesman for the more forward-looking and imaginative currents in the very diverse streams of American Protestant Paul Tillich thinking. But he is not only a theologian, he is a philosopher as well. And this gift, combined with his wide learning, his experience spanning two continents, and perhaps above all his long concern with the religious values of so-called secular culture, has given him a wide audience far outside any merely conventionally religious circles. He is both a participant in the Western religious tradition, and also a factual and fair-minded, though not disinterested, observer of its world-wide encounters. Tillich

tant

is

theologians

261

Philosophy and Religion Tillich takes religion broadly as being grasped

to

which

concern

by an ultimate concern

other concerns are preliminary. The religious name for this in the West, God, and in the East, some less personal

all is,

highest principle. But the main characteristic of the present encounter of the world religions is their facing of the "quasi-rehgions" of our time. In these secular quasi-religions, the ultimate concern is directed toward objects like nation, science, a particular form or stage of society, or a highest ideal of humanity. Tillich undertakes an acute analysis of the "radicalizations" in fascism

something

in taking

finite as

religion of equal power,

nature,

in

and

may be those who

it

on the image of

to take

its fragility.

and

their

the evil generated

He

asks whether

most Western countries

and suggests

that in defending itself

is

socialism, all

unconditionally ultimate.

humanism dominant

the liberal

holds,

and and communism, with

character of nationalism

potential religious

The

is

led to violate attack

a quasi-

real danger,

He

it.

he

very

its

judges that

Judaism, Western Christianity, and Islam have been so far comparatively immune to communism, because they still have as their essence the prophetic quest for justice out of which

What

communism

itself

developed.

has been the historical attitude of Christianity toward other

religions? It has not

been exclusively negative, but rather a

union of acceptance and rejection, with

all

"dialectical"

the tensions, uncertainties,

and changes that

implies. Admitting the lack of consistent attitude, emphasizes the strain of Christian universalism from the Gospels and the Fathers through the eighteenth-century philosophies of "religion"

Tillich

of Kant, Fichte, Schelling,

and Hegel, which

in

the later nineteenth

century transformed Christian universalism into humanistic relativism.

As examples

who urged Arnold

J.

of the

most radical re-evaluation, he

cites

Ernst Troeltsch,

replacing missionary attacks with "cross-fertilization," and

Toynbee,

who

advocates a synthesis of world religions.

reaction to this— in the direction of an exclusive conception that Christianity

Thus today there

is is

The

denying

one religion among others— culminates in Karl Barth. a profound contrast, an inner tension and dialectic,

in Protestantism.

This

ambivalence Tillich finds

encounter with the quasi-religions.

makes the

especially Its positive

relation of Protestantism to

confusing

in

the

major

valuation of the secular

them more ambiguous than

that

which denies them any religious significance. Protestantism can receive and transform their religious elements; it is also a more easy prey to their absolutizing of the finite. This attitude toward the quasi-religions of secularism, not one of simple negation but a "dialectiof Catholicism,

cal" one, "is not a weakness, but the greatness of Christianity, especially in

its self-critical,

How No

is

Protestant form."

the continued presence of

religion

is

many

religions to

be understood?

of one pure "type"; rather, each exhibits contrasting poles,

262

John Herman Randall,

Jr.

and tensions between interdependent elements, which drive it on to new its characteristic emphases. This makes possible religious growth without assuming a unilinear development, as did the Hegelians. Thus Buddhism is not a stage of religion now left behind, as Hegel held; combinations of

it is

a

still

living religion, with

its

own

tension of emphases, itself in polar

tension with the emphases of other religions. Christianity cannot be

tion

absolute

the

called

from

all

religion;

has

it

always

embodied some

selec-

the elements and polarities that constitute the religious

realm.

Concretely, Tillich sees the encounter between Christianity and Bud-

between the primacy of the mystical and the ethical elements that appear in different emphases in both. This leads each to a further dialogue within itself over the relationship of the two poles in its own present type. Both religions have grown out of the experience of the Holy as present here and now; like all higher religions, both have transcended it while preserving it, pushing that experience toward the Holy as being— the mystical, and as what ought to be— the ethical. There is no living religion without both, but in all born in dhism

as a "dialogue"

India the mystical element predominates, just as in those born of Israel the social-ethical does. Tillich sketches such a dialogue of encounter in the light of his

own

dialogues in Japan, exploring the contrast between the two symbols for

Kingdom of God and Nirvana. No fusion, no common denominator that would reduce the concreteness of the symbols, is possible. Yet the two are not mutually exclusive; the Christian tradition has included parts of the Buddhist revelation. There is the contrast between the two principles involved, of "participation" and of "identity," the ultimate, the

which lead the Christian while the Buddhist sees Christianity has

man

to

its

it

to see nature as a tool for

as

human

something to be identified with in

purposes, art.

Again,

elements of nature-mysticism. With the relation of

man, participation leads

to

agape— love— while

identity leads to

compassion, the former to the will to transform individual and social

from them. comes to a preliminary breakdown. He

structures, the latter to salvation

Here reflects

for Tillich the dialogue

that

Christianity has

its

own

elements of mystical salvation

no revolutionary dynamics in Buddhism: "No impulse for transforming society can be derived from the principle of Nirvana." But history itself has driven Buddhism to take history seriously: Buddhists in Japan, and not only there, are looking for a spiritual foundation for democracy. Is this possible without the estimate of every individual as a person, "a being of infinite value and equal right in view of the Ultimate?" The Buddhist says, "If every person has a substance of his own which gives him true individuality, no community between individuals is possible." The Christian replies, "Only from

history; but

he can

find

263

Philosophy and Religion

with such persons is community possible, for community presupposes separation. You have identity, but not community." TiUich ends on this note; but will the history of

The

Buddhism?

fruit of Tillich's reflections is that in the

hght of their encounters

must judge themselves afresh. Christianity as the basis of its self-judgment must use the criteria found in its central symbol, which he interprets as the crucifying of the particular for the sake of the universal: the principle of love liberates from bondage both to a particular "rehgion" and to the religious sphere as such. From this followed the two major tensions in Christian self-interpretation, that between the particular and the universal character of the Christian claim, and that between Christianity as itself a religion, and as the negation of "religion." Christianity developed into a specific religion, and also received elements from all the other religions it has confronted. For centuries its openness and its receptivity were its glory, until with the Reformation they were lost on both sides, and it ceased to be a center of crystallization for all positive religious elements. The record illustrates "the rhythm of criticism, countercriticism and self-criticism" throughout all the encounters of religions

Christian history.

What

outcome

the

is

criticism.

in the present

now aware

Christians are

that

They no longer attempt Buddhism,

learn also a

new

a

community

and Taoism he

"dialogue" already started.

From such

Does

this

first

mankind

mean

of them, or the

urges

of conversation; with

a

continuance

of

its

attack

would would then seem

way which

historical

destiny

religiously."

either a mixture of religions, or the victory of

end

the

self-criticism, Christianity

valuation for secularism;

not merely negative, but "the indirect takes to unite

self-

to "convert" in the traditional sense.

With the Jews they have created Hinduism,

encounter? Tilhch assumes that

must be a mutual judging and

it

of the reHgious age? Tillich rejects all three.

would destroy the concreteness which

gives religion

its

one

The

dynamic

power. The second would impose one particular answer. The third will not occur because the religious principle cannot come to an end. A particular rehgion will be lasting to the degree in which it negates itself as "a religion." "Thus Christianity will be a bearer of the religious answer as long as it breaks through its own particularity."

The way

to achieve this

is not to relinquish one's religious tradition concept which would be nothing but a concept. The way is to penetrate into the depths of one's own religion, in devotion, thought and action. In the depth of every living religion there is a point at which the religion itself loses its importance, and that to which it points breaks through its particularity, elevating it to spiritual freedom and with it to a vision of the spiritual presence in other expressions of the ultimate meaning of man's existence.

for the sake of a universal

264

John Herman Randall,

What

Tillich

is

synthesis. Rather,

counseling it is

is

new

not a

community

a

Jr.

universal religion, not a

new

of religions in dialogue with each

other; each led to further self-criticism through the criticism of and by what it encounters. "Community," he insists, "presupposes the separation of what is individual," not a swallowing up in identity. He is applying

own social principle to religions themselves. Where does this leave the quasi-religions? National and social cerns are humanly great and worthy of commitment. But when such

his

con-

mix-

and destructiveness are elevated to unlimited ultimacy, as in their radical forms, they become demonic. Secularism, if it be the aflBrmation of secular culture to the exclusion of religion and prophetic criticism, must be rejected by any religion. But even then it has positive instrumental value: "The secularization of the main groups of presentday mankind may be the way to their religious transformation." And if tures of creativity

it

can retain

secular

its

critical spirit, rejecting all religious

Protestant

absolutism,

Christianity

must

absorb

or quasi-religious

and transform the

of men. We find today those who maintain that must become secular. For these it has become "an expresthe ultimate meaning in the actions of our daily life. And this interests

Christianity sion of is

what

it

should be." Tillich has not forgotten his spiritual ancestor

in Luther.

Assuredly, Tillich has not said the last word in suggesting these approaches to the major religious problem of our times. The processes of dialogue and self-criticism are infinitely difficult in detail, intellectually as well as practically. But without something of the insights and convictions he expresses so provocatively, to

be futile. Perhaps the most

distinctively

all

further words are likely

American contribution

to the theological

reformulations within Protestantism in our century— so distinctive as to

cause European eyebrows to be raised— was the movement toward an "empirical theology" that endeavored to "demythologize" the Christian tradition

by interpreting

it,

not in terms of the earlier philosophical

idealism, or, in the present fashion, in terms of

German

existentialism,

but rather in terms of the thought of the American philosophers of the era between the wars. Easily the most original and provocative of this group has been Henry Nelson Wieman, long an influential teacher in the Divinity School of the University of Chicago. In the Library of Living

Theology has appeared The Empirical Theology of Henry Nelson Wieman, edited by Robert W. Bretall, as companion to earlier volumes on Tillich, Reinhold Niebuhr, and Emil Brunner. This comprises nineteen interpretations and criticisms of Wieman's thought from a group ranging from thinkers close to his own position to thinkers as remote from him as Father Gustave Weigel, S.J., and including men like Daniel D. Williams, Stephen C. Pepper, Walter M. Horton, and Edwin A. Burtt.

265

Philosophy and Religion

Wieman

furnishes an intellectual autobiography, and detailed answers

to each of his critics. In the former

philosophers

who formed

his

own

he

tries to

come

to terms with the

Dewey and Whitehead,

views,

well as with Tillich and Karl Barth; in the latter he imdertakes

as all

those necessary qualifications and elaborations a lifetime of religious

thinking has brought

him

to.

From the beginning Wieman asked himself, "What operates in human life with such character and power that it will transform man he cannot transform himself, saving him from evil and leading him to the best that human life can ever reach, provided he meet the required conditions?" From Dewey he learned, "Inquiry concerning what makes for the good and evil of human life must be directed to what actually and observably operates in human life." Following such an "empirical" method, he has found that transforming process, that creative transformation of the human personality, of the social order, and of the course of history, which is the meaning of the presence of God in human experience. Hence he interprets God as what Whitehead calls "creativity," meaning "the transformation of the individual by innovating insights." Religious knowledge will be the discovery, by empirical inas

quiry, of

what does

so actually operate in man's experience.

most fruitful dialogue with Wieman's "naturalism," he fears he has "adopted a much too simple positivism in his epistemology, and then has tried to bring all the cognitive aspects of religious knowledge within the narrow framework of that positivism." Here, as in his other replies, Wieman accepts the emphases of the more sophisticated views of recent theologies of "commitment." But he sturdily insists that scientific knowledge and involvement of the whole personality can be united. Reliable distinctions and creative transformations of human existence need not be in conflict. He has learned much from Tillich and others of the important funcPerhaps Daniel D. Williams

Wieman

initiates the

here. Sympathetic with

with the source of human But he still thinks that what commands faith has a structure by which it can be known, and that this demands cognitive symbols as well, that is, an empirical and philosophical

tions of non-cognitive

good immanent

symbols

in co-operating

in the processes of hving.

interpretation.

The sympathetic on the

reality of

critics in this

volume make

God Wieman saved

clear

how by

insisting

a generation of American liberal

from the narrowness of a mere humanism. The currents have been running in other directions, and most of them have wanted to go on from Wieman. But they all make fundamental his central insistence that unless God is found working in human experience, he cannot be the God who redeems. In that sense, all

religious thought

of recent theology

Protestant religious thinking has

become 266

experiential.

:

John Herman Randall, Tillich

approaches

existentialism,

theologians

the

Wieman

have

problems

in

that

begun

also

to

of

of

Jr.

rehgion

in

philosophic

explore

the

the

language

naturalism.

resources

of

of

English linguistic

was reported in the excellent account by Frederick Ferre, Language, Logic and God. This year we can only mention the volume edited by Ian T. Ramsey, Prospects for Metaphysics, which contains many suggestive studies on the interconnections between theology, metaphysics, and ethics. It indicates that at the moment perhaps the most interesting philosophical development is the marriage between the children of the church and the offspring analysis for their purposes, as

recently

of Wittgenstein.

History of philosophy

Any attempt x\- philosophy

to

consider

the

significant

works

in

the

history

of

appearing during the past year must begin with the

opening volume of W. K. C. Guthrie's Histoiy of Greek Philosophy, planned to carry the story in five volumes down to but not including the Neoplatonists Guthrie judges that with the Neoplatonist Plotinus there seems to enter "a new religious spirit which is not fundamentally Greek," which points to medieval philosophy rather than back to the ancient world. This first volume is entitled The Earlier Presocratics

and the Pythagoreans; it includes the MilesXenophanes, and Heraclitus, as well as

ians,

The author hopes that the second volume will be able to discuss on the same full scale the remainder of the Preso-

the Pythagoreans.

cratic philosophers.

Guthrie

is

the successor of F.

M. Comford

in the chair of ancient philosophy at

He

Cam-

perhaps best known for his suggestive and witty The Greeks and their Gods (1950). His present enterprise is bridge University.

is

W. K. C. Guthrie comprehensive consideration of the whole history of Greek philosophy to appear in English since the translation of Theodor Gomperz's Greek Thinkers (1901-12); it is the first study on such a scale to be written by an English scholar. This initial volume is a worthy companion to the Presocratic Philosophers of G. S. Kirk and J. E. Raven (1957); together the two are bound to supersede John Burnet's Early Greek Philosophy, a landmark in its day, which has served since 1892 as the Bible in English for this field. Cornford used to maintain with some asperity the quality of Cambridge not only the

first

267

Philosophy and Religion classical scholarship in philosophy. It is evident that the present genera-

need fear no lowering of standards. is needed ... is a comprehensive and systematic account which will so far as possible do justice to the opposing views of reputable scholars, mediate between them, and give the most reasonable conclusions in a clear and readable form." He adds, "The qualities called for are not originaHty and brilliance so much as clearheadedness, sober sense, good judgment and perseverance." In tion

Guthrie comments: "What

these latter qualities he certainly excels.

ment here

is

many

of the

What

distinguishes his treat-

not novel interpretations, but his careful taking account scholarly disputations on vexed points of understanding,

and his constant endeavor to give just due to the truth that lies behind what seem to him rather extreme positions, and to explain why scholars have so disagreed. Illustrative is his attitude toward the disparagement of Aristotle as a reliable source on the views of his predecessors, advanced in the impressive and influential writings of Harold Chemiss. He defends "the soundness of Aristotle's judgment in general," and insists that Aristotle himself makes clear the controlling preconceptions which enable us to correct the efiFect of his o\\ti philosophical outlook upon the selection he makes from his past.

As a

result of this

attitude, the reader

can count on a sober and

sane discussion— favorite words of Guthrie— of most of the scholarly controversies

evidence

is

generated by the fact that with the early Greeks the

sufficient to suggest

many

interpretations, but often inade-

quate to refute any one conclusively. Here

what the

early Greeks

is

were doing or how

no preconceived view their

of

pioneer reflections

developed, but rather the present state of scholarly opinion as appraised

by a

mind. Guthrie's plan makes no demand for a knowledge is confined to the supporting footnotes. It seems that this history will remain for some time the standard treatment

judicial

of Greek; such Greek likely

in English, the starting point for all further explorations

ideas formulated

by the Greek mind, and transmitted

of the great

to the

West

in

the classic tradition.

To the present-day mind, the three major figures in ancient philosophy who still seem most illuminating and suggestive in themselves are the three

who

contributed most to the formation of the classic tradition. In

them taken together, we find most of the great ideas first worked out. They still possess a perennial freshness; they remain the intellectual contemporaries of every philosophical mind. of "seminal minds";

our

own

centur>',

It is

even our

fashionable to speak

own

generation, can

boast of some. But the great seminal minds of Western thought have

been Plato, Aristotle, and Saint Augustine. Four very different books in English have recently tried to come to terms with these ever-new figures. No one, however critical of the 268

John Herman Randall, tradition, or howe\'er start, is

convinced he

willing to give

approaches him from

up

Plato.

is

How

that he to find

Jr.

is

bravely making a fresh

much

in Plato

the standpoint of linguistic analysis

the thorough and unorthodox

the Oxford philosopher,

I.

An Examination

M. Crombie. Crombie

is

when one

revealed in

of Plato's Doctrines is

by

helped by his having

much thought to the analysis of the distinctive logic of religious language so as to make sense out of it. Another volume, Norman GuUey's given

Theory of Knowledge, puts rather more emphasis on historical and explores the variety of Plato's contributions to the analysis of knowledge. In The Political and Social Ideas of St. Augustine, Herbert A. Deane, a philosophically trained historian of political theory at Columbia, comPlato's

scholarship,

bines historical with philosophical analysis to exhibit the relations be-

tween Saint Augustine's general framework of thinking and his social and political theories, emphasizing a much closer connection than is often assumed.

He

also explores the coherence of the social philosophy

itself.

In Deane's hands the major transmitter of classical ideas to the

West

turns out to possess as great philosophical

power

as

he has had

influence on the classic tradition.

Emerson Buchanan's Aristotle's Theory of Being is a brief but peneand interpretation of Aristotle's conception of ousia or being as found chiefly in the central Books Z, H, and (VII, VIII, and IX) of the Metaphysics (see Vol. 8, pp. 550a-578a, c). As such, it is trating analysis

probably the most significant investigation of the focus of Aristotle's metaphysics since Joseph Owens' The Doctrine of Being in the Aristotelian Metaphysics (1951). Like Guthrie's history. Father Owens' study is

a critical examination of the recent literature on the subject.

Buchanan

concentrates on the text, assuming that Aristotle's terms are to be taken

etymological meaning." He finds that in Book Theta (IX) Aristotle comes out with a dynamic conception of being as energeia, "activity." In arriving at a completely universalized concepliterally, in "their plain,

tion of being, Aristotle did not forsake the

dynamism

of his analysis

of natural processes.

Aside from specialized studies, the event of the year in medieval is the brilliant Evolution of Medieval Thought by the Cambridge scholar David Knowles. This is not a history in the conventional

philosophy

and it in fact leaves the presentation of philosophical positions and the arguments for them to others, so that it is most suggestive to

sense,

those already familiar with the substance of medieval philosophizing.

But

it

is

immensely stimulating

as

"history,"

in

the

of illuminating the context of thinking, in the sidelights in the judicious appraisal of relations

and

broader it

sense

throws, and

contrasts. It claims to exhibit

medieval philosophy as the "direct continuation" of Greek thought, and the continuity has never been more persuasively set forth. It is weakest

269

Philosophy and Religion century, whose brilliance it recognizes, as breakdown rather than as the vital reconstruction of a tradition, and in perpetuating the myth of a discontinuity between medieval and modern philosophizing. One more general interpretation of a whole period treats its subject as the working out of a novel intellectual enterprise to a breakdown that called for another fresh start. In the four volume history of philosophy edited by Etienne Gilson, there is now available the third part. Modern Philosophy: Descartes to Kant, by Gilson and Thomas Langan. In the view of the authors, Aristotelianism had exhausted itself, leaving a vacuum to be filled by the seventeenth-century philosophers who started from the new science. Those who, beginning with Descartes, took mathematics as their model produced the golden age of modern metaphysics; those who started with Bacon's observational in treating the fourteenth

the

ideal led in the age of Locke, an age of philosophy without metaphysics, to the tradition of criticism, which, like that of

and

his followers in the fourteenth century,

William of Ockham all metaphysical

banished

speculation, finally losing itself in "the poverty-stricken doctrines of the

nineteenth-century ideologists"

who came

after Condillac.

Kant

the

is

climax of this intellectual episode, and the doorway into "the era of temporality, relativity, and Ek-sistenz." He initiated "the modern reduction

of philosophy to science";

by depriving

ethics

of

any objective

foundations, he started an age of moral faith in which "ethical truth its motives of credibility"; by substituting for obbeauty our appreciation of it, he confused the philosophy of art with aesthetics. Within this framework of appraisal, which the authors do not attempt to keep from coloring their emphasis and their interpretation and criticism of the major philosophers on whom they concentrate, they

progressively lost jective

present a lively and often penetrating examination of those aspects of

modern philosophers

that justify their judgment.

the tremendous influence of the philosophizing

new

They

rightly

emphasize

science in setting the course of

and determining the new

assumptions

on

which

it

proceeded. In the central "problem of knowledge" those assumptions generated, they conduct a very acute analysis from the standpoint of the Aristotelian tradition; this

is

particularly the case with the major empiricists, including

the Lockean side of Kant.

It is

true that the decline of rational theology

and such figures cyclopedists, and Rousseau receive short is

relentlessly pursued,

to explore a detailed critical

modem and

its

Hobbes, Spinoza, the EnBut for one who wants examination of the major figures in earlier as

shrift.

philosophy from a perspective rooted in the classic tradition

enduring ideas,

it

would be hard

work.

270

to find a better place to see

it

at

John Herman Randall,

A

Jr.

work dealing with a specialized discipline, The Development of Logic by the Oxford logicians William and Martha Kneale, must now be set beside A History of Formal Logic of I. M. Bochenski (English translation by I. Thomas, 1961). The work of the Kneales has met with an extraordinarily fine reception, though, as was to be expected in view of the controversial nature of logic today, there have been disagreements about their interpretation of the developments after Gottlob Frege (1848-1925), which occupy the last four chapters. Kneale himself stands broadly in the tradition of J. Cook Wilson, the influential Oxford logician of the first part of the century. The appearance of these two histories of logic after long neglect is an indication that the heirs of the renaissance of formal logic in our century, who have hitherto been too busy to bother with their predecessors, are at last further general historical

begiiming to take a lively interest in past solutions to problems similar to their

own.

American philosophy

Among the many competent jTx movements, there are three

studies of individual philosophers

we emphasized

thought. At the outset

and

dealing with major figures in American

volume on The

the appraisal of the present

American Philosophy by John E. Smith. Smith's analysis of his five representatives— Peirce, James, Royce, Dewey, and Whitehead— is a brilliant delineation of the central drives that distinguished each, and yet united them in a common body of convictions that expressed what Smith calls the "unwritten philosophy" deeply rooted in American experience. These drives and convictions Smith sees in a broader perspective that both exhibits them as continuous with the mainstream of the Western humanistic tradition, and at the same time is aware of their limitations. situation in the judicious

Spirit of

There are three dominant or focal beliefs through which our philosophic spirit can be articulated. First, the belief that thinking is primarily an activity in response to a concrete situation and that this activity is aimed at solving problems. Second, the belief that ideas and theories must have a "cutting edge" or must make a difference in the conduct of people who hold them and in the situations in which they live. Third, the belief that the earth can he civilized and obstacles to progress overcome by the application of knowledge. Taken together, these beliefs define a basically humanistic outlook. ... All things derive their value from the contribution they make to the founding and the securing of the good life. All

human

five

of

Smith's

philosophers

gave

function of reflective thought.

intervene in

human

life,

that

it

central

importance

They believed

to

the

that reason can

can establish connections with

human

purposes and goals. Yet three of them, Peirce, Royce, and Whitehead,

remained devoted to the ancient ideal of rational 271

truth, that

is,

that in

Philosophy and Religion its

distinctively intellectual function thinking

tism" in the narrower sense

is

is

autonomous. "Pragma-

only one form of the broader doctrine

is an activity performed by men, that it is a means of answering questions and solving problems. Smith raises questions about the second conviction, that ideas must make a difference. It is important to do away with specific evils; but

that thinking

man and

is

no mere technician: he is concerned with himself, his nature, For him these are all "practical" problems of the highest

his destiny.

import.

Smith

intelligence

calls

for

a broadening of the scope

traditional quest for understanding. "It

of the

problems

must deal with, from the concern with the immediate

He

judges that this

is

has become increasingly clear that questions about

to the

taking place:

man and his command

inner life— his morality, his religion, his sanity— have taken as the 'real'

Smith

problems of men."

questions

also

the

transform the conditions of

environment,

it

was extended

conviction,

third

human

life.

that

knowledge

can

First directed to the external

to the faith that the

knowledge

of the

problems arising out of social and hishimself might prove to be the greatest problem

social sciences could solve the

"That man and obstacle to progress was not, until recently, considered a serious possibility." Here, too. Smith sees a broadening and deepening of problems. "Controlling the external world is not enough; more attention must be paid to the distinctively human problems of morality, of religion, and of art." Smith does not urge forsaking the characteristic spirit of American philosophizing as articulated by the great figures of the golden age. He ends with a plea for an original and creative philosophy based on two of their central convictions: the belief that experience, in its comprehensive and not in its narrow sense, is a genuine disclosure of reality that can be trusted; and that reason, in the broader sense not limited to an abstract formal structure standing apart from a world of brute fact, or to its deductive sense in mathematics and its analytic function in physics, is an actual power in the world and in living experience. What Smith is really urging is that American philosophizing become aware of itself as the spearhead of the classical tradition of Western humanism, and bring whatever distinctive insights it has been able to attain to the task of extending rather than narrowing the concerns of that tradition of wisdom. But this is precisely the aim of all our critical philosophies of experience. What Smith hopes is that American philosophy can regain the independence of thought that will enable it to torical life.

play a distinctive role in the

Smith

ojEers

common

enterprise.

a sympathetic, though far from uncritical, analysis of

the central drives of major American thinkers of the past eighty years. Side by side with his broad delineation, we can now place the acute

272

John Herman Randall, technical

of

criticism

Jr.

one of the ablest participants

in

those

great

debates. Arthur O. Lovejoy, dean of American philosophers and last survivor of the group Smith

He was most

1962.

since his historical

concerned with, died on December

is

30,

widely known as a historian of ideas, especially

The Great Chain of Being came out in 1936, and his illuminating studies commenced with the very beginning of his career,

was appropriate in one who called himself a temporalistic realist. But his reputation as a philosopher was first established as a leader in the movement of the realistic revolt against idealism in the first decade as

of the century. In his long series of philosophical papers, culminating

Carus Lectures, The Revolt against Dualism (1930), he upheld known as critical realism, largely through bringing his powers of logical analysis to bear upon the vagueness and confusions in his

the position

of other views.

He

took as his special victims the

members

of the other

contemporary revolt against idealism in what was loosely known as the pragmatic movement. These critical studies have now been collected in a volume entitled The Thirteen Pragmatisms and Other Essays, taking its name from the most famous of all ( 1908 ) Throughout, Love.

joy's logical analysis tries first to state explicitly

the premises of a position, next the con-

clusions drawn, and then to examine the argument carefully to see whether the latter follow consistently from the former, or whether ambiguities and shifts of meaning enter at any point. The conclusions are illicit if they spring from an initial confusion or later

vagueness. Lovejoy held that

if

philosophers

can be brought to agree on the definitions of their key terms and on what data they will accept, they may also be brought to agree on their conclusions.

To come

agreement, co-operation

regarded his

is

own work

to such an initial

necessary. Lovejoy

as a contribution to

Arthur O. Lovejoy

this clarifying enterprise.

Lovejoy was the great exposer of the looseness and vagueness in much and his keen criticism is essential, if not always final, in any appraisal, an indispensable supplement to set of the thinking of the pragmatists,

beside Smith's more sympathetic insights. This volume of illustrations of his logical analysis at work has also, as George Boas suggests in his preface, the enduring philosophical value of presenting an analytical

method

that can

be practiced on present-day

a process of philosophizing that

Lovejoy recognized to the

full

is

issues

and

their discussion,

both illuminating and chastening.

the non-rational factors in men's dealing

273

Philosophy and Religion

with philosophical issues, the temperamental assumptions never questioned or even clarified which control men's most rigorous thinking. But he held that rational analysis could bring these non-rational factors to Hght and perhaps even lead to their discounting. As Boas remarks, "At a time of mounting anti-intellectualism, this should prove a welcome antidote." Lovejoy anticipated by a generation the drive for intellectual

emphasized by the present-day brands of philosophical But with his gifts of historical imagination, he had a concern not merely with the issues of his own da>- here dealt with, but with the whole sweep of the classic tradition. What did not pass his own high tests of rational consistency he did not accept, but neither did he dismiss it as meaningless: he tried to understand. Lovejoy's clarification and criticism deal with issues that have now receded into the past. But one of Smith's figures, Whitehead, though clarity so strongly

analysis.

scarcely influential on the

main currents

of

contemporary philosophizing,

continues to be of concern to a small but increasing body of students; and the literature dealing with his ideas has burgeoned in recent years.

dozen book-length studies of his philosophy have appeared in English, and almost as many in other tongues. In 1961 Ivor Leclerc of Glasgow edited a co-operative volume of significant papers, The Relevance of Whitehead; 1963 has already seen another, Alfred North Whitehead: Essays on his Philosophy, edited by George L. Kline. Whitehead, perhaps the greatest speculative philosopher in the AngloAmerican tradition, is a thinker who stands sorely in need of elucidation. We now have the authoritative volume of Victor Lowe, Understanding Whitehead, to ser\^e as the best gateway into his thought. Lowe, though he disclaims discipleship, is one of those welcome students of an original philosopher who can always clear up a difficult point by recalling a private conversation. He has long been known for his careful and detailed study of the development of Whitehead's thought; this essay, thoroughly revised and e.xpanded, forms the central portion of the book. It is preceded by a clear exposition of the major phases of Whitehead's

At

least a

philosophy, and followed by a defense of his conception of experience

and

of the critical

and constructive use he makes

of

it.

Lowe

has no

private axe to grind, and he can put himself sympathetically and lucidly inside his teacher's problems. Since

human

Lowe

is

addressing "the intelligent

and not merely other students of Whitehead, he does not argue with other interpretations; he does not attempt the kind of critical analysis found in the commentaries of Nathaniel Lawrence, Ivor Leclerc, Robert M. Palter, or William A. Christian. Indeed, he has made Whitehead's thought so transparently his o\mi that he fails to see the need of answering the critical questions raised by other competent students. Nor does he, perhaps, really succeed in defending Whitehead's particular form of "experientialism" against the doubts of the "empiricists." being,"

274

John Herman Randall,

Lowe can

Better than any one else,

Jr.

take you inside Whitehead; once

you must use your own wits. But cannot the same be said of all the ence we have here been exhibiting? there,

critical

philosophies of experi-

BIBLIOGRAPHY

The

books

listed

below have been

Deane, Herbert

dis-

Abmstrong,

New

D.

Bodily

M.,

Sensations.

Perception

and

New

Humanities Press,

,

York:

the

Physical

1961.

Geach, Peter

How

Do

ty:

Things with J. Words. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Uni-

Austin,

L.,

to

Philosophical Papers, ed. by

New

1961.

Max,

Studies

in

socratics

Vol.

A

History of Greek Earlier Pre-

The

I,

and the Pythagoreans.

New

Press, 1963.

Aristotle's

Heidegger, Martin, Being and Time, trans, by John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson. New York: Harper & Row,

1962.

1962.

Jonathan, The Diversity of Meaning. London: Methuen & Company L.

Hook, Sidn-ey, The Paradoxes of Freedom, Berkeley: University of California

Ltd., 1962.

Crombie,

I.

Doctrines.

Press, 1962.

An Examination of Plato's Vol. I, Plato on Man and So-

M.,

Kaelin, Eugene

on Knowledge and York: Humanities Press,

thetic:

ciety, Vol. II, Plato

Reality. Inc.,

1963.

Hare, Richard M., Freedom and Reason. Fair Lawn, N.J.: Oxford University

Theory of Being. Cambridge, Mass.: Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Monographs, Num2,

Inc.,

York: Cambridge University Press, 1962.

1962.

ber

N.Y.:

Ithaca,

1962.

Philosophy.

Blanshahd, Brand, Reason and Analysis. London: George Allen & Unwin, 1962.

Cohen,

Some Medieval

Random House,

Guthrie, W. K. C,

Cornell University Press,

Buchanan, Emerson,

York:

Inc.,

1962.

Models and Metaphors: Language and Philosophy.

Ithaca, N.Y.:

of

Theories.

GuLLEY, Norman, Plato's Theory of Knowledge. New York: Barnes & Noble,

Sense and Sensihilia, ed. bv G. Wamock. Fair Lawn, N.J.: Oxford ,

Black,

Modern

GiLSON, Etienne, and Langan, Thomas, Modern Philosophy: Descartes to Kant.

J.

Urmson and G. J. Wamock. Fair Lawn, N.J.: Oxford University Press,

University Press,

Reference and Generali-

Cornell University Press, 1962.

O.

J.

T.,

An Examination

and

versity Press, 1962. ,

and So-

Ferre, Frederick, Language, Logic and God. New York: Harper & Brothers,

1961.

Inc.,

Political

cial

York: Humanities Press, Inc., 1962.

World.

The

A.,

Ideas of St. Augustine. New York: Columbia University Press, 1963.

cussed in the preceding essay.

New

F.,

An

The Theories

Existentialist Aes-

of Sartre

and Mer-

leau-Ponty. Madison: University of Wis-

consin Press, 1962.

1962, 1963.

275

Philosophy and Religion Kline, George L. (ed.), Alfred North Whitehead: Essays on His Philosophy.

Englewood

Cliffs,

N.J.:

tions:

edge.

physics. Fair

Smith, John

1962.

The Structure

(eds.),

ety

Philosophy,

Politics

W.

and

&

The Spirit of American Lawn, N.J.: Oxford

Fair

Thorson, Thomas Landon, The Logic of Democracy. New York: Holt, Rinehart

& Winston,

G.

Inc.,

1962.

TiLLiCH, Paul, Christianity and the En-

Soci-

counter of the World Religions.

(Second Series). Oxford, England:

Basil Blackwell,

N.J.:

University Press, 1963.

of Sci-

Foundations of the Unity of Science, Vol. II, No. 2. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962. entific Revolutions.

Laslett, Peter, and Runciman,

MetaOxford Uni-

(ed.). Prospects for

Lawn,

E.,

Philosophy. S.,

Inc.,

York: Colimibia University Press, 1962.

eval Thought. Baltimore: Helicon Press,

KuHN, Thomas

Knowl-

Books,

Schneider, Herbert W., Ways of Being: Elements of Analytic Ontology. New

Medi-

of

Basic

versity Press, 1963.

1962.

Knowles, Da\id, The Evolution

of Scientific

York:

Ramsey, Ian T.

Kneale, William, and Kneale, Martha, The Development of Logic. Fair Lawn, N.J., Oxford University Press,

Inc.,

New

1963.

Prentice-Hall,

1963.

Inc.,

The Growth

New

York: Columbia University Press, 1963.

Mott, Ltd., 1962.

WiEMAN, Henry Nelson, The Empirical Theology of Henry Nelson Wieman, ed. by Robert W. Bretall. New York: The

Leclerc, Ivor (ed. ), The Relevance of Whitehead. New York: The Macmillan Co., 1961.

Macmillan Co., 1963.

LovEjOY, Arthur O., The Thirteen Pragmatisms and Other Essays. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1963.

Wright, Georg H. von. The Goodness.

New

Varieties of

York: Humanities Press,

1963.

Inc.,

Lowe, Victor, Understanding Whitehead. Yolton, John W., Thinking and Perceiving: A Study in the Philosophy of Mind. La Salle, 111.: The Open Court Publish-

Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1962.

Merleau-Ponty, Maurice, Phenomenology of Perception, trans, from the French by Cohn Smith. New York: Humanities Press, Inc., 1962.

ing Co., 1962. ZiNK,

Sidney,

New Popper, Karl, Conjectures and Refuta-

York:

The Concepts St.

of Ethics. Martin's Press, Incorpo-

rated. 1962.

note to the reader of the philosophical Many themes discussed

issues and by Professor Ran-

valuable material in the Syntopicon and in

Great Books of the Western World. As Professor Randall observes, the method of language analysis, which at present plays so prominent a role in British and

review of recent developments in philosophy and religion have a long history. The reader who is interested in dall in his

their historical

background

will find

much

American philosophy,

276

is

similar in

many

John Herman Randall, ways

to the

method used by

most

Aristotle,

Being

Jr.

the most valuable references be-

1,

notably in the Nicomachean Ethics (Vol.

ing

pp. 339-436). The reader who ested in exploring this subject

Metaphysics, Aquinas'

9,

would do well

to

is

inter-

in-

troductory essay to the Sijntopicon chapter

on Language. Then he can investigate

and

3fl-3c

5-5a.

A

These pas-

and obscuri-

particularly valuable text in this area

The the

reaction against language analysis

name

of

"reason" appears to be

closely related to

between

the traditional dispute

rationalists

and

empiricists.

in

found in the passages cited under Good AND Evil 3a. Also touched upon is the distinction between a morality of ideals and a morality of interests. This distinction is closely related to that between an ethics of duty and an ethics of happiness. Passages in Great Books of the Western World dealing with this issue are cited in the Syntopicon under Duty 2 and Happiness 3. Two books on democracy are reviewed

is Book III, "Of Words," in Locke's Essay Concerning Human Understanding (Vol. 35, pp. 251b,d-306d).

in

in

upon a

moral philosophy. One of the central problems is that of defining the good. The various definitions of the good for man can be

languages, and with their imperfections—

ty.

Aristotle's

Theologica,

wide variety of concepts and problems

sages deal with the growth and hfe of their ambiguity, imprecision,

Summa

Professor Randall touches

ethics,

the passages in Great Books of the Western World cited in the Language chapter

under topics

Sophist,

Plato's

to

and Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. In his discussion of recent works

further

begin by reading the

those

The

in

central aspects of this dispute are discussed

An

essay.

this

thinking

earlier

excellent

on

this

summary

of

can be the chapter on subject

in the introductory' essay to the Sijntopicon

found

chapter on Experience. Passages defining

Democracy.

the character of rational knowledge are

mocracy and comparisons between it and other forms of government can be found in the passages cited under Democracy 1.

listed in the

chapter on

Knowledge under

topic 6h{S), while differing views

on the

in

the

essay

for

Traditional conceptions of de-

discover necessary

In the section on religion, the confronta-

relations are set forth in the passages cited

and beand secular thought are discussed. Material on earlier similar confrontations can be found in the passages cited under Religion 6d and 6g.

capacits'

of reason

to

tions

under Necessity antd Contingency 4a.

The new in

this

efforts

tween

in ontology described

essay inevitably call to

mind the

major analyses of "being" which loom so large in the history of Western philosophy.

These are summarized

between

different religions

religious

Finally, for the reader

who

is

interested

in the history of logic, the introductory es-

in part in the intro-

say to the Syntopicon chapter on Logic

ductory essay to the Syntopicon chapter on Being. The key passages expressing di-

provides a good brief

verse conceptions of being are cited under

modem

277

development.

summary

of

its

pre-

1 ^

.^H

EDWARD

U.

CONDON,

Washington University in

1902.

A

Louis,

in St.

Wayman Crow Professor of Physics at was bom at Alamogordo, New Mexico,

graduate of the University of California at Berkeley, where he

received his Ph.D. degree in

1926, he also studied at the universities of

first book Enghsh on quantum mechanics; in 1935, with G. H. Shortley, he wrote The Theory of Atomic Spectra, stiU the definitive work on the subject. After several years as a lecturer and teacher in physics at Columbia, Princeton, and Minnesota universities, he became an associate director of research for the Westinghouse Electric Corporation. In 1945 he was appointed Director of the National Bureau of Standards by President Truman, a position he held until 1951, when he became director of research for Coming Glass Works. Since 1956 he has been chairman of the physics department at Washington Univer-

Gottingen and Munich. In 1929, with P. M. Morse, he wrote the in

sity.

the

His scientific achievements include major roles in the development of

Franck-Condon principle dealing with molecular motions, and

in

the

interpretation of radioactive decay.

ROBERT JASTROW, the Man-in-Space Program,

is

who

contributed the section on

The

Utility of

Director of the Institute for Space Studies, God-

dard Space Flight Center, National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

GARRETT,

C. G. B. the author of the section on Optical Masers, is head of the Optical Electronics Department, Bell Telephone Laboratories, Murray Hill, New Jersev.

)

PHYSICAL SCIENCES AND TECHNOLOGY EDWARD U. CONDON

The ments

of this essay indicates that

title

it is

concerned both with develop-

pure sciences and with advances in the technological apphcations of science. At the risk that attends all generalizations, we may say that the past year (and perhaps even the past several years) saw many more spectacular developments in technology than in the in the

physical sciences proper.

The reason for this imbalance is not hard to find. It lies in the space exploration program on which the world, but mainly the United States and the U.S.S.R., is embarked. Billions of dollars and miUions and engineering man-hours were spent last year on the United States space effort alone. Most of this expenditure went into technological channels, although part of it did find its way into pure of scientific

scientific research efforts. It

seems appropriate, therefore, to begin

this

essay with a section

detailing the present state of the art of rocketry— the art

which makes

the entire space exploration program possible. In the second section,

we

up by means of which send the near future. The these rockets or it is planned to up in third and fourth sections assess the results obtained by space exploration so far and future results expected. The third is concerned with the purely scientific results, and the fourth considers the contribution of the U.S. space program— and especially the Man-in-Space program—to the wellbeing of the nation. (The section on the Man-in-Space program is by Dr. Robert Jastrow of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.) consider the various spacecraft which have been sent

Because of the concern

felt in

the United States in recent years about

the kind of scientific education which children and young people are

we include in the fifth section an account of the steps currently being taken to improve science teaching and learning on all levels— in elementary schools, secondary schools, colleges, and universities. In the sixth section we turn to a development that is not directly receiving,

connected with the space program. Here events

in a field that is

we

describe the most recent

only a few years old— "optical masers" (lasers);

the advances here are mainly in the field of pure rather than appHed science, although masers are expected eventually to tical use. (This section

is

by Dr. C. G.

Laboratories.

279

have great pracTelephone

B. Garrett of Bell

Physical Sciences and Technology

we

Finally, in the seventh section,

1963

is

lutionary theory of the atom, this

take cognizance of the fact that

the 50th anniversary of the announcement of Niels Bohr's revo-

last section,

and that Bohr himself died

we have

therefore,

in 1962. In

supplied a fairly detailed review

of the present picture of atomic structure

and how

it

developed during

the last half-century, largely as an outgrowth of the work of Bohr.

Bigger and bigger rockets

Very large rockets have been built in the postwar years, and

still

larger

ones are under development. These rockets provide the propulsion for sending scientific instruments

and men into

They

orbit

to the

Moon,

in the

postwar revolution in military technology.

or to the nearer planets.

Rocket propulsion

is

around the Earth,

are also a major

component

sometimes called reaction propulsion. To get

a propulsive force in the forward direction, a stream of material

method

is

used on a small scale in rotating lawn sprinklers which eject streams of water in a direction approximately opposite to that in which the sprinkler turns. It is also used ejected to the rear at high speed. This

in the skyrockets seen in fireworks displays.

now

is

The same

principle

is

ap-

New

York to Paris in a few hours. The first recorded military use of rockets was in China in a.d. 1232, in the defense of Kai-feng Fu against attacking Mongols. The news traveled rapidly westward to Europe. Later in the thirteenth century, an Arabic book on the art of rocket making appeared. Rockets were used in warfare plied in jet planes which

in the ensuing centuries.

Indian troops of

made

fly

from

Toward

eflFective

the end of the eighteenth century,

use of them against the British, firing volleys

two thousand at a time. William Congreve, a British

artillery expert, developed incendiary which were used to burn much of Boulogne in the Napoleonic Wars in 1806, and also against the French fleet. In 1807 they were used against Copenhagen, again at Leipzig in 1813, and at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815. However, with the improvements in artillery that were being made, interest in rockets as weapons lapsed. The subject was again taken up by R. H. Goddard, professor of physics at Clark University, who in 1919 proposed the use of rockets as a means of reaching "extreme altitudes." He had a successful test in 1926 in which his rocket reached the great altitude of 184 feet! Later, with support from the Guggenheim Foundation, he carried on work on

rockets for the British

a

much larger scale at Roswell, New Mexico. In Germany Hermann Oberth published a pamphlet. The Rocket

into

Interplanetary Space (1923), which stimulated technical interest there and led to the formation of a Society for Space Travel. In 1932 the

German Army began Treaty of Versailles.

to take

A

an

interest: rockets

were not barred by the work

secret research establishment for rocket

280

Edward

U.

Condon

Robert H. Goddard, the father of U.S. rocketry

was set up toward the end of 1933. Wemher von Braun, then aged 20, was put in charge. (Now, 30 years later, he is in Huntsville, Alabama, in charge of the major rocket development program at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's Marshall Space Flight Center.) Out of the beginning in 1933 came the large German rocket test center Peenemiinde on the Baltic coast. That center produced the German V-2 weapon, the first of which was fired against Paris on September 6, 1944. The V-2's were about 46 feet tall and 5/2 feet in diameter, used alcohol and liquid oxygen as fuel, weighed about 14 tons when fully loaded, and traveled at 3,300 miles per hour, at an altitude of some 60 miles, carrying a 2,000-pound bomb for a range of about 200 miles. Since their speed exceeded that of sound, there was no defense against them. Altogether the Germans fired some thirteen hundred of these weapons against England. The last V-2 that was used in the war was fired against Antwerp in March, 1945. As German military might finally collapsed, the rocket men destroyed the Peenemiinde base and fled, leaving it to be captured by the advancing Soviet army. At the war's end, Russia and the United States vied for the services of the German rocket men and for the supply of finished and partly finished V-2's from the German factories. In America, however, the rocket development program remained small until 1954, when the arms race began in earnest. By that time both at

281

Physical Sciences arid Technology

Russia and the United States had successfully tested thermonuclear weapons. Each of these H-bombs had an explosive power equal to a million times that of the one-ton chemical bombs which the German V-2's dropped on London. Hea\y emphasis was placed on developing

IRBM's (intermediate range balhstic missiles) to go about fifteen hundred miles and ICBM's intercontinental ballistic missiles to go more (

)

thousand miles. These goals are now fully accomplished and such missiles are in

than

five

regular production in both countries.

The period of July 1, 1957— December 31, was designated as an International Geo-

1958,

physical Year

(I.G.Y.

major co-operative

).

effort

This represented a

among

scientists of

more about the Earth on and about the Sun which makes

nations to learn

all

which we

live

it. As part of the planning, an committee in 1954 recommended that the program ought to include a rocketlaunched satellite to go around the Earth car-

life

possible on

I.G.Y. special

r\'ing scientific instruments.

On

July 30, 1955,

Eisenhower announced from the White House that this would be done as part of the American contribution to the I.G.Y.: we would plan to launch ten satelhtes, each weighing t\vent>'-one pounds. The announcement received a banner headline next day in the New York Times, which also carried a Early V-2 rocket subsidiary stor>- headed "Russia also striving to put up satelhte." On October 4, 1957, the Russians put up the first satellite, Sputnik I, a ball weighing 184 poimds, which stayed in orbit for three months. On November 3, 1957, Sputnik II was put in orbit, this one weighing President

1,120 pounds. It carried a dog to longed weightlessness.

now made

Frantic efforts were

test

to

how

a

mammal would

react to pro-

speed up the United States program.

In early 1958 the U.S. put three small satellites in orbit:

Explorer

Vanguard

I I

Explorer III

January 31, 1958 March 17, 1958

30.8

March

31

26,

1958

lb.

3.2.5 lb. lb.

Then, on May 15, 1958, the Russians put up Sputnik III, which had a weight of 2,926 pounds. The first U.S. satelhtes of more than a thousand pounds came with the Discoverer series, the first of which was launched

282

Edward

U.

Condon

Vostok

February 28, 1959, with a weight of 1,300 pounds. By May 24, 1960, the United States had put up Midas II with a weight of 5,000 pounds, but during 1960 the Russians had launched Spacecraft I, 11, and III, each with a weight of 10,060 pounds, and then, on February 4, 1961, the 7.1ton Sputnik VII.

The

manned

first

on April

On May

5,

came with the

satelHte flight

12, 1961, in Vostok

1961, Alan B. Shepard

"Freedom

of 302 miles in

7,"

flight of

Yuri Gagarin

a vehicle with a weight of 10,418 pounds.

I,

made

a successful suborbital flight

followed by another such suborbital

flight

July 21, in "Liberty Bell 7." This

of 303 miles by Virgil L. Grissom on was followed on August 6, 1961, by the flight of Gherman Titov in Vostok II, which completed seventeen orbits of the Earth. On February 20, 1962, "Friendship 7" carried John H. Glenn successfully around the Earth three times. The Soviet cosmonauts Andrian Nikolayev and Pavel Popovich in Vostok III and IV, completed, respectively, sixty-four and forty-eight orbits on August 11-15, 1962. L. Gordon Cooper completed

twenty-two orbits

in "Faith 7"

Russians established two

made

new

the longest flight thus

for a distance of

two

tina Tereshkova, in

more than

far,

on

May

15-16, 1963. In

June 1963, the

records: Valery Bykovsky, in Vostok V,

going around the Earth eighty-one times and the first woman astronaut, Valen-

million miles,

Vostok VI,

made

a flight

which orbited the Earth

forty-eight times.

On May

25,

announced

in a

1961, just after the Shepard flight. President

message

to

Kennedy

Congress the goal of the United States to land

283

Physical Sciences and Technology

men on

the

support,

Moon by

NASA

1970. Congress has thus far given this

having $3.6 bilUon to spend in the

program

fiscal

full

year ending

The Russians have not announced their plans, but it is believed they will make eflForts to keep the lead that they have in this 30, 1963.

June

field.

How doMotion

rockets

work? The governing principle

is

Newton's Third

Law

(Principles, Vol. 34, p. 14b; also Corollary III, pp. 16bof 17b). Let us suppose that u ft/sec is the speed relative to the rocket

with which the gas stream leaves the nozzle and that the rate of ejection of material from the nozzle

is

m

lb/sec.

Thus momentum toward the rear

mu Ib-ft/sec^. By Newton's Third must gain forward momentum at this same

leaving the rocket at the rate of

is

the so

body

mu

is

of the rocket

Law rate,

the force (in poundals) urging the rocket forward. Expressed

in pounds,

it

is

m(u/g), where g

=

32.2 ft/sec-, the acceleration of

gravity.

Therefore the of ejection

m

lifting force in

of products of

u/g (expressed

in

seconds)

pounds

is

fuel.

also equal to

u/g times the rate

in lb/sec. In rocket

technology

called the specific impulse of the fuel-

nozzle combination. For example, the

oxygen and alcohol as

is

combustion

If

German V-2

undiluted, this

rocket used liquid

would give an exhaust

velocity of 13,000 ft/sec, hence a specific impulse of about 406 seconds.

would melt the nozzle. By come out at about 3,000°C.;

In this case, however, the gas temperature eflBcient this

nozzle cooling, the gases could

was accomplished by

diluting the alcohol with water.

Thereby the

exhaust speed was reduced to 7,300 ft/sec, giving a specific impulse of

228 seconds.

A large

rocket should be designed for a burning rate

enough so that the

thrust,

m{u/g),

will

m

lb/sec that

.

VIKING

V-2

JUPITER

THOR REDSTONE VANGUARD JUNO

284

is

be large compared with

II

„

1 ^m

THOR-ABLE

.

Edward

M

the weight

(

in

Condon

U.

pounds ) of the rocket;

M

diminishes as fuel

We are interested in the velocity which the rocket will attain. for the initial mass,

when

V

where

t is

—

velocity v

=

u log

0,

we

Mo/M —

burned.

is

Writing

Mo

find

gt

time and log means a natural logarithm. This shows that for

maximum velocity we need as possible,

and

t

to

make

ii

as large as possible,

as small as possible.

The value

of u

is

Mo/M

as large

limited

temperature of combustion that will melt the nozzle. The is limited, since Mo includes the weight of the payload to be

value of

by the

Mq/M

lifted as well

weight of the container which holds the initial fuel charge. A value for the mass ratio Mo/M that can reasonably be achieved is about 4. Since log 4 = 1.39, an exhaust speed of u = 7,300 ft/sec permits the attainment of a vertical speed of 7,300 X 1.39 or about 10,100 ft/sec ( minus whatever is lost in the falling term, gt, for the time of burning ) If the burning time is ten seconds the gravitational loss is 322 ft/sec, as the

which is small compared with that gained from the nozzle reaction, in this example about 3 per cent. To put a rocket in orbit a speed of about 18,000 mi/hr (26,000 ft/sec) is needed. We see that this cannot be directly achieved with a

Rockets shown in their proportionate sizes

ATLAS-AGENA THOR-DELTA

ATLAS D

TITAN

285

CENTAUR

SATURN

C-1

Physical Sciences and Technology

mass ratio of 4 and a nozzle velocity of 7,300 ft/sec. This difficulty is overcome by use of multistage, or step, rockets. When the first stage is burned out, the empty fuel container serves no further useful purpose and so can be dropped loose to fall back to earth. If now the payload of the first stage is really another rocket which also has a mass ratio of 4, by the time it is burned out another 10,000 ft/sec of speed will be added and the remaining payload will have a vertical speed of about 20,000 ft/sec. If again the payload of the second stage is really a third rocket, whose payload is the ultimate one that is to be put in orbit, then its final speed will be about 30,000 ft/sec, which is more than enough to put that payload into orbit. for one ton of net payload in the third stage there probably another ton of structure. With a mass ratio of 4, the third stage initial mass must then be eight tons. If the second stage structure is another eight tons, then the second stage initial mass must be 16 x 4

Working backward,

is

or 64 tons.

And

similarly the initial total

hundred

must be Also working backward, in excess of five

it

is

mass of the whole assembly

tons.

easy to see that in order to achieve we would need to be able to

the desired final speed in a single stage,

build a rocket that could carry fuel amounting to 36/37 of It is

its

total mass.

quite out of the question to reduce the weight of payload, container,

nozzles,

and controls

to as little as 1/37 of the total.

for satellite launching are

made

That

is

in stages, usually three, as

why

all

rockets

assumed

in

our

example.

The

rockets

and launch vehicles

in the table

(

on page 287 ) are among

those that have already been successfully developed and used. In addiare now under active development for future space programs. These rockets are larger and more powerful than any

tion, there are several that

previously launched.

an advanced version of a U.S. Air Force intercontinental Powered by a combination of nitrogen tetroxide and hydrazine, the two engines of its first stage will develop a thrust of 430,000 pounds, while the single engine of the second stage will develop Titan

II is

ballistic missile.

an additional 100,000 pounds. The Titan will be 90 feet in height and have a diameter of 10 feet. It is planned to have a capabiHty of launching a 6,000-pound payload into orbit 100 miles above the earth and is presently scheduled to be the launch vehicle for the two-man Gemini spacecraft.

Centaur is the first rocket planned to use the extra-powerful fuel combination consisting of liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen. This fuel will give 40 per cent more thrust than kerosene and hquid oxygen. Centaur

be the second stage, with Atlas as the first stage. This combination is have a capability of placing an 8,500-pound satellite into an orbit 300 miles in altitude, and also of launching a 750-pound unmanned payload to a landing on the moon. Centaur is also to be used as the launcher for will

to

286

1

'

o !

C

on

W5

o

ID

3

2

-w

JS

1

:§

'C

-c

05 Tf 03

.„

c

y --en

^3

^O e^ m

tJ

03

^

-3

-£h

in 05

- ^o

"a

^ § S u 3

c 3

C/D

cS

8

^

^«D Co

'1'

a> 'a

C

00 in a>

05

o CD

o CD

05

05

1

1 in

c/3

Tf CD

O^^ o o n 00

1-d

1O

-c

c

t^e

Ph

!> U5 CO

in

CD 1—1

8

1—1

i-H

(yi

^ •M

r«

O ^v. "ili^a S» O r» •"

CD

t^

W

1> cq

O o ai 1—1

o lO CD a>

o o o

o o o

o o o o^ 05

rf

c CD

X

X!

in

X

X

X

X

in

1—1

CD CD

CO ai

l>

t~-

CO 00 t-

ai 00

i>

«o s»

;Ji

bO

Ji

2 a>

3

W5 a>

W

o>

1—

^

o

^

o CD

CO

05

^^

i-H

1—1

1—

1—

>—


-

that

we have

range of values of

ahready discovered

Z

all

exist.

Figure 3

S

TTZE

n^

® 343

(less

of the

:

Physical Sciences and Technology

Physicists and chemists were next confronted with the problem of finding out the form in which positive electricity exists in the atom and how the electrons are arranged in different atoms. To understand what they did, we must consider the early nineteenth- century development of spectroscopy. Toward the end of the seventeenth century two contradictory views were put forward about the fundamental nature of light, that form of energy which stimulates visual sensation, affects photographic plates, and enables plants to grow. Isaac Newton (1642-1727) is usually said to have favored the view that light is a stream of corpuscles, while Christiaan Huygens (1629-95) developed the idea that it consists of wavelike pulses propagated through an all-pervasive hypothetical medium called the "aether." ( See Newton, Optics, and Huygens, Treatise on Light, Vol. 34.) Newton, however, was not as specific in his views as this statement would imply, judging from this communication to the Royal Society ( December 7, 1675 ) something of a different kind propagated from lucid bodies. may suppose it an aggregate of various peripatetic qualities. Others may suppose it multitudes of unimaginable small & swift Corpuscles of various sizes, springing from shining bodies at great distances one after another But they that like not this, may suppose Light any other corporeal emanation or an Impulse or motion of any other Medivim or aethereall Spirit diffused through the main body of Aether, or what else they can imagine proper for this purpose. To avoyde dispute & make this Hypothesis generall, let every man here take his fancy, Onely whatever Light be, I would suppose, it consists of Successive rayes differing from one another in contingent circumstances, as bignes, form or vigor

Light

is

They

that will

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

A large part of the history of physics from then to now is concerned with the fluctuating fortunes of the corpuscular and wave views with which Newton here deals so

Young

in

impartially.

1801 on interference of

light,

From

the researches of

and those

of A.

J.

Thomas

Fresnel and

of Joseph von Fraunhofer in the early nineteenth century, the experimental evidence seemed to be decisively in favor of the wave theory. The wave theory dominated the subject until light quanta were dis-

covered by

A wave

Max

Planck in 1900 and Albert Einstein in 1905.

its wave number, which is the number of complete cycles of oscillation per unit of length taken in the direction of propagation of the wave. This can be measured, as Fraunhofer showed (1821), with a diffraction grating. Color correlates with wave number: red Hght consists of some 17,000 waves/cm, violet of 33,000 waves/cm, with the other colors of the spectrum ranged in between. The wave is

characterized by

to be a much more accurate way of characterizing the hght than vague subjective description of its color.

number proves

344

Edward

CaCa He 3969

U.

Condon

FeFe

Ca Ca "* ^ H6 HT Fe 4102 422743Q8 4341

Mg 5173 5270 Solar spectrum

A

any optical device for analyzing a composite beam by different wave nmnbers and for measuring the wave numbers. The hst of wave numbers together with measures of relative intensity is called the spectrum of the hght from any spectroscope

is

of light into parts characterized

source.

Fraunhofer had showTi that the light from the sun consists of waves ranging over a continuum of wave numbers, crossed by a large number of lines of darkness, or wave numbers at which the light is very weak.

Fraunhofer had waves/cm agree

also

observed that his tvvo dark

D

lines

closely with a pair of bright yellow lines

at

16,960

which occur

flames, and that these lines are much brightened (sodium chloride) is put into the flame. G. G. Stokes of Cambridge wrote to Thomson (Lord Kelvin) at Glasgow in 1854 propounding an analogy with mechanical resonance in sound; according to this analogy, atoms would strongly absorb the same frequencies of wave motion as those they emit. In his letter, Stokes says, "I beheved in the spectra of

when common

many

salt

was sodium in the sun's atmosphere." Within a week Thomson rephed to Stokes suggesting that other substances might be found in the sun and stars by this method. If the wave numbers of bright lines in the flame spectra of a substance on earth match those of the dark lines in the spectra of the light from sun and stars, this points to the presence of the substance in the sun. Most of modern astrophysics is built on the fruitful exploitation of that suggestion. The first to put it into practice and to discover metals other than sodium in the sun was Gustav KirchhoflF (1824-87), whose work on this was done in the period 1859-61. In the century since then, there

detailed analyses of the composition of the atmospheres of

many

thou-

sands of stars have been made.

Most

of the strong lines in the solar spectrum could

be correlated with

those occurring in terrestrial Hght sources. Strong lines

first observed spectrum in 1868 that could not be so correlated were correctly surmised to be due to an element not yet discovered on earth; it was called helium by Norman Lockyer. In 1895 this surmise

in the solar

345

Physical Sciences and Technology

was confirmed with the discovery on earth by Sir WiUiam Ramsay of a gas whose spectrum matched that of the "hehum" hnes on the sun. It is the element for which 2 = 2, having two electrons in its atoms.

Avast

amount

of

work was done

in the last half of the nineteenth

century in measuring accurately the

wave numbers

of thousands

atomic spectra. Although this was immensely useful for chemical analysis, no progress was being made on the really fundamental question: What feature of the structure of an atom determines of lines in

the kinds of light emitted in

The

spectra of

its

spectrum?

some substances,

particularly

hydrogen and the

alkali

metals, are relatively simple, in contrast to the complex spectrum of iron,

which

excited in an electric arc

between iron

thousands of distinct

In 1885 a discovery of great importance was

lines.

made by Johann Jakob Balmer

electrodes,

consists

(1825-98), a Swiss schoolteacher.

of

He

found a simple formula representing the wave numbers of the principal spectral lines in the spectrum of hydrogen:

=

TS. to

dous convulsions of nature, such as volif

Burials Marriages

14,718 11,984 19,154

Proportion

and the consequent discouragements to agriculture, than to the loss which they sustain bv the plague. The most tremen-

do not happen

Births

21,963 21,602 28,392

Annual Average

and

of Prussia

of Lithuania

of births to

which thev groan,

canic eruptions and earthquakes,

1702 1716 1756

at-

tributed to the tvranny and oppression of

the government under

Kingdom

Dukedom

accounts ven' soon obliterated.

causes that produce even sickly sea-

yrs. to

>Ts. to yrs. to yrs. to

1702 1708 1726 1756

of

Pomerania

Births

Burials Marriages

6,540 7,455 8,432 12,767

4,647 4,208 5,627 9,281

1,810 1,875 2,131 2,957

Proportion

Proportion

of births to

of birtJis to burials

marriages

36 39 39 43

10 10 to 10 to 10 to to

140 177 150 137

100 100 to 100 to 100 to to

In this instance the inhabitants appear have been almost doubled in fifty-six years, no very bad epidemics ha\ing once interrupted the increase, but the three years immediately following the last period (to 1759) were years so sickly that the births were sunk to 10,229, and the

sons and epidemics ought to be ranked a

to

crowded population and unwholesome and insufficient food. I have been led to this remark bv looking over some of the tables of Mr. Susmilch, which Dr. Price has extracted in one of his notes to the post-

burials raised to 15,068.

on the controversy respecting the population of England and ^^ales. They are considered as ver^' correct, and if such tables were general they would throw great light on the different ways bv which population is repressed and prevented from increasing beyond the means of subsistence in any country-. I will extract a part of the tables, with Dr. Price's remarks. script

Is

it

number

not probable that in this case the

had increased faster accommodations necessary^ to preserve them in health? The mass of the people would, upon this supposition, be obliged to live harder, and a greater number would be crowded together in one house; and it is not surely of inhabitants

than the food and the

495

Great Books Library improbable that these were among the natural causes that produced the three sickly years. These causes mav produce such an

though the

e£Fect,

may

sidered,

For further information on this subject, Mr. Susmilch's tables. The extracts that I have made are sufficient to show the periodical though irregular returns of sickly seasons, and it seems highly probable that a scantiness of room and food was one of the principal causes

I

countr\-, absolutely con-

not be extremely crowded

a country even thinly an increase of population take place before more food is raised and more houses are bviilt, the inhabitants mvist be

and populous. In inhabited,

if

some degree

distressed in

Were

subsistence.

for

that occasioned them. It

room and

prolific

greater

take

the marriages in Eng-

the

number

sicklv seasons

of

and

this,

added

of

ver\-

imfavorable effect on the health of the

common

the

that prevailed.

people.

positive

tion of the cause that

Neumark Annual Average 5 5 5

of

yrs.

yrs.

3,483 4,254 5,567

1,436 1,713 1,891

Proportion

Proportion

of births to

Annual Average

marriages

of births to burials

5 >TS. to 1701

37 to 10 40 to 10 42 to 10

155 to 100 164 to 100 143 to 100

5 5

1726 1756

yrs. to yrs. to

Or,

it is probable that the custom of early marriages will continue till the population of the countn,^ has gone be\ond the increased produce, and sickly seasons appear to be the natural and nec-

courage marriage,

essan,'

consequence.

I

should

fore, that those countries

Epidemics prevailed for six years, from 1741, which checked the in-

was increasing

e.xpect, there-

where subsistence

suflficiently at

times to en-

courage population but not to answer all its demands would be more subject to pe-

crease.

Dukedom

of

Magdeburgh

Annual Average

Births

5 yrs. to 1702 5 yrs. to 1717 5 yrs. to 1756

6,431 7,590 8,850

yrs. to yrs. to

yrs. to

riodical epidemics

4,103 5,335 8,069

than those where the

population could more completely accom-

Burials Marriages

modate

1,681 2,076 2,193

An

itself to

the average produce.

observation the converse of this wiU

probably

also

be found

Proportion

Proportion

countries

that

are

of birtlis to

of births to burials

sicknesses, the increase of population, or

Annual Average

The

it.

condition of the laborer as greatly to en-

1736, to

5 5 5

impelled

to

Burials Marriages

5,433 7,012 7,978

first

be more particular, when the increasing produce of a countr)- and the increasing demand for labor so far amehorate the

Brandenburgh

Birtlis

1701 to 1726 to 1756

>Ts. to

Cultivation

When

kind.

to the necessit)- of

harder Hving, would probably have a

for

than of the preventive from a prospect of increasing plent)' in any country, the weight that represses population is in some degree removed, it is highlv probable that the motion will be continued beyond the opera-

houses to remain the same, instead of five or six to a cottage there must be seven or eight,

fast

must have been improving, and marriages, consequently, encouraged. For the checks to population appear to have been rather

of marriages than usual to

supposing

were increasing rather

old states, notwithstanding the occasional

than usual, or even were a

number

place,

appears from the tables that these

countries

land for the next eight or ten years to be

more

refer the reader to

1702 1717 1756

marriages

38 36 40

to 10 to 10 to 10

156 142 109

to to to

to

In

those

periodical

the excess of births above the burials, will

100 100 100

be greater than tries

years 1738, 1740, 1750, and 1751,

were particularly

true.

subject

If

sickly.

496

is

in the inter\'als of these periods

usual, ceteris paribus, in the coun-

not so

much

subject to such disorders.

Turkey and Eg\pt have been nearly

Malthus: Essay on Population

depended upon, but, probably, in this instance they do not give incorrect proportions. At least there are many reasons for

stationary in their average population for

the last century, in the intervals of their periodical plagues, the births

must have

exceeded the burials in a greater proportion than in such countries as France and England. The average proportion of births to burials in any country for a period of five or ten years will hence appear to be a very inadequate criterion by which to

expecting to find a greater excess of births

real progress in population.

This proportion certainly shows the rate of

tional yearly increase of produce will almost invariably be followed by a greater

increase during those five or ten years;

proportional increase of population. But,

judge of

its

above the burials than in the of

in

the population

good land

former period

the

In the natural progress

latter.

of

any country more be taken

will, ceteris paribus,^

into cultivation in the earlier stages of

than in the

we

And

later.

it

a greater propor-

can by no means thence infer what had been the increase for the twenty years before, or what would be the in-

besides this great cause, which would nat-

crease for the twenty years after. Dr. Price

beth's reign than in

Sweden, Norway, Russia, and the kingdom of Naples are increasing fast; but the extracts from registers that he has given are not for periods of suffi-

ent century,

but

observes

extent

cient

burials greater at the

that

the

establish

to

fact.

It

I

cannot help thinking that

the occasional ravages of the plague in the

former period must have had some tendency to increase this proportion. If an average of ten years had been taken in the

is

however, that Sweden,

highly probable,

above the end of Queen Elizathe middle of the pres-

urally give the excess of births

intervals

of the

returns of this dreadful

had been would

Norway, and Russia are really increasing in their population, though not at the rate

disorder, or

that the proportion of births to burials for

certainly give the proportion of births to

the

short

periods

would seem

to

Dr.

that

show. For

Price

the years of plague

rejected as accidental, the registers

burials too high for the real average in-

takes

five years,

if

crease of the population. For

end-

some few

years after the great plague in 1666,

ing in 1777, the proportion of births to

it is

Naples was

probable that there was a more than usual

reason to suppose

excess of births above burials, particularly

would indicate an increase much greater than would be really

if Dr. Price's opinion be founded, that England was more populous at the revolution (which happened only twenty- two

burials

in

the

kingdom

144 to 100, but there

is

of

that this proportion

found to have taken place in that kingduring a period of a hundred years.

dom

years afterwards) than

it is

at present.

compared the registers of many villages and market towns in England for two periods: the first, from Queen

tion of the births to the burials throughout

Elizabeth to the middle of the

to 100. Dr. Short

Dr.

Mr. King,

Short

in

1693, stated the propor-

the Kingdom, exclusive of London, as 115

last cen-

and the second, from different years at the end of the last century to the middle of the present. And from a comparison

makes

it,

in the

middle

tury,

of these extracts,

former period

it

the

1

very greatly depend on the spirit of industry that prevails, and the way in which it is directed. The knowledge and habits of the people, and other temporary causes, particularly the degree of civil liberty and equality existing at the time, must always

appears that in the births

exceeded

the

burials in the proportion of 124 to 100,

but

I say ceteris paribus, because the increase of the produce of any country will always

in the latter only in the proportion of

111 to 100. Dr. Price thinks that the registers in the former period are not to be

have great influence recting this spirit.

497

in

exciting

and

di-

Great Books Library stant as any of the laws of nature with which we are acquainted. The passion between the sexes has appeared in every age to be so nearly the same that it may always be considered, in

of the present century, 111 to 100, includ-

The proportion in France for ending in 1774, was 117 to 100.

ing London. five years, If if

these statements are near the truth, and there are no very great variations

particular periods

would

appear

the proportions,

in

population

the

that

at

algebraic language, as a given quantity.

it

The

of

beyond the food which it can either produce or acquire is a law so open to our view, so obvious and evident to our understandings, and so completely confirmed by the experience of every age that we cannot for a moment doubt it. The different modes which nature takes to prevent or repress a redundant population do not appear, indeed, to us so certain and reg-

consequent vicious habits, war,

riage, the

luxury, the silent though certain depopula-

and the

tion of large towns,

and

tions

insufficient

close habita-

food of

many

of the

poor prevent population from increasing

beyond the means

of subsistence, and,

if I

may

use an expression which certainly at

first

appears strange, supersede the neces-

sity

of great

and ravaging epidemics

great law of necessity which prevents

population from increasing in any country

France and England has accommodated itself very nearly to the average produce of each country. The discouragements to mar-

we cannot always we may with certainty

but though

ular,

the mode,

to

what is redundant. Were a wasting plague to sweep oflF two million in England and six million in France, there can

the fact.

repress

If

the proportion

predict

predict

of births

to

deaths for a few years indicate an increase of nimibers

much beyond

the proportional

be no doubt whatever that after the inhabitants had recovered from the dreadful

increased or acquired produce of the country,

we may be

shock the proportion of births to burials

less

an emigration takes place, the deaths

would be much above what

will

it is

in either

New

it

of heaven.

to the miraculous

The

causes of

it

Were

every inquiring mind. spirit

It

ines.

The only true criterion of a real and permanent increase in the population of any country is the increase of the means of subsistence. But even this criterion is subject to some slight variations which are, however, completely open to our view and observations. In some countries population appears to have been forced, that is, the people have been habituated by degrees to live almost upon the smallest possible quantity of food. There must have been periods in such countries when popu-

are not remote,

accords with the

of philosophy to sup-

pose that not a stone can fall or a plant rise without the immediate agency of divine power. But we know from experience ture have

what we been conducted almost

bly according to fixed laws.

And

there no other depopulating causes,

subject to periodical pestilences or fam-

interposition

that these operations of

real average in-

every country would, without doubt, be

and mysterious, but near us, round about us, and open to the investigation of liberal

and that

crease of the population of the country.

latent

most

the births;

few years cannot be the

Jersey, the proportion of births

on an average of seven years, ending in 1743, was as 300 to 100. In France and England, taking the highest proportion, it is as 117 to 100. Great and astonishing as this difFerence is, we ought not to be so wonder-struck at it as to atto deaths

tribute

shortly exceed

the increase that had taken place for a

country at present. In

perfectly certain that, un-

call na-

invaria-

lation increased permanently,

since the

world began, the causes of population and depopulation have probably been as con-

increase in the

seems

498

to

means

answer

without an China

of subsistence.

to this description. If the

Malthus: Essay on Population accounts

we have

of

are to be trusted,

it

of living almost

upon the

The law

in

is

means

of subsistence that the average

repeatedly called that the

necessarily

is

country

produce of support the

it

is

lives

but barely

sufficient

of the inhabitants,

for.

demand for a greater population made without preparing the funds necessary to support it. Increase the demand

the population.

the

at-

hear of

come when it is thus The true reason is

increase does not

chil-

dren has tended principally thus to force

A nation in this state must be subject to famines. Where a so populous in proportion to

as to

population.

China

expose their

to

an abortive

common

so

is

encouragements that ought to be given to If the tendency of mankind to increase be so great as I have represented it to be, it may appear strange that this

smallest possible

putrid offals that European laborers would rather starve than eat.

hope,

will

tempt. Nothing

quantity of food and are glad to get any

which permits parents

humanity

to

the lower classes of people are in the habit

by promoting cultiand with it consequently increase the produce of the country, and ameliorate the condition of the laborer, and no apprehensions whatever need be enterfor agricultural labor

to

vation,

any

from the badness of seasons must be fatal. It is probable that the very frugal manner in which the Gentoos are deficiency

tained of the proportional increase of pop-

in a year

An attempt to effect this purpose any other way is vicious, cruel, and tyrannical, and in any state of tolerable freedom cannot therefore succeed. It may appear to be the interest of the rulers, and

of scarcity without materially distressing

the rich of a state, to force population,

in the habit of living contributes in

some

ulation.

degree to the famines of Indostan.

in

In America, where the reward of labor is

at present so liberal, the

lower classes

might retrench very considerably themselves.

A

famine therefore seems

may be

and thereby lower the price of

to

rewarded. The numbers will

permanently increase without

uously resisted by the friends of the poor,

It

expected

consequently

that in the progress of the population of

America, the laborers will less liberally

in this case

and

labor,

expense of fleets and armies, and the cost of manufactures for foreign sale, but every attempt of the kind should be carefully watched and stren-

be almost impossible.

in

time be

a proportional increase in the

much

means

of

particularly

subsistence.

ceitful

In the different states of Europe there

the

when

on that account,

must be some variations in the proportion between the number of inhabitants and the quantity of food consumed, arising from the different habits of living that prevail in each state. The laborers of the south of England are so accustomed to eat fine wheaten bread that they will suffer themselves to be half starved before they will submit to live like the Scotch peasants. They might perhaps in time, by the constant operation of the hard law of necessity, be reduced to live even like the lower Chinese, and the country would then, with the same quantity of food, support a greater population. But to effect this must always be a most difficult, and every friend

dially received I

it

comes under the de-

garb of benevolence, and to

likely,

is

be cheerfully and

cor-

by the common people.

entirely acquit Mr. Pitt of

any

sinister

intention in that clause of his Poor Bill

which allows a

shilling a

week

to every

laborer for each child he has above three. I

was brought some time after, I such a regulation would be

confess, that before the bill

into Parliament,

thought that

and

for

highly beneficial, but further reflection on the subject has convinced

me

that

if

its

object be to better the condition of the poor,

it

is

calculated to defeat the very

purpose which

it

has in view.

It

has no

tendency that I can discover to increase the produce of the country, and if it tend to increase the population, without increas-

499

Great Books Library

the

new

and inbe that

the necessary

ing the produce,

evitable consequence appears to

colonies,

where the knowledge and

industry of an old state operate on the

same produce must be divided among

fertile

unappropriated land of a

new

one.

a greater number, and consequently that a day's labor will purchase a smaller quan-

In other cases, the youth or the age of a

and the poor therefore in general must be more distressed. I have mentioned some cases where population may permanently increase without a proportional increase in the means

importance.

state

tity of provisions,

of subsistence.

But

it

is

restricted to a limit

beyond which

it

it,

It

is

probable that the food divided in as great

is

plenty to the inhabitants, at the present period,

as

it

was two thousand, three

And

thousand, or four thousand years ago. there

is

reason to believe that the poor and

thinly inhabited tracts of the Scotch High-

between the

food and the numbers supported by

not in this respect of very great

of Great Britain

evident that the

variation in diflFerent states,

is

much

lands are as

is

as the rich

not pass. In every country the population

lous province of Flanders.

of which is not absolutely decreasing the food must be necessarily sufficient to support and to continue the race of la-

by a people more advanced

borers.

tion,

Were left to its

by an overand popu-

distressed

charged population

can-

a country never to be over-run

own

but

in arts,

natural progress in civiliza-

human

from the time that its produce might be considered as an unit to the time that it might be considered as a million, during the lapse of many hundred years, there

food which they produce, and happy according to the liberality with which that

would not be a single period when the mass of the people could be said to be free

Other circumstances being the same, it may be affirmed that countries are populous according to the quantity of

food

is

divided, or the quantity which a

day's labor will purchase.

Com

from

countries

for

more populous than pasture countries, and rice countries more populous than com countries. The lands in England are not suited to rice, but they would all bear potatoes; and Dr. Adam Smith observes that if potatoes were to become the fa-

common

and if the same quantity employed in their culture as

ple,

ployed

it,

we have

first

ple

exist-

though perhaps

cause;

in

some

of

these states an absolute famine has never

been known. Famine seems

peo-

was now em-

to

be the

dreadful resource of nature.

is

population

is

so superior to

last,

the most

The power the power

the earth to produce subsistence for

country

would be able to support a much greater population, and would consequently in a

that premature death

very short time have

of

it.

mankind

in the great

its

finish

in

of in

man

some shape The vices

race.

are active

and able ministers

They

are the precursors

of depopulation.

its

must

human

or other visit the

of a country does not de-

pend, absolutely, upon its poverty or riches, upon its youth or its age, upon

human

miUions and millions of

ences have been repressed from this sim-

of land

in the culture of corn, the

The happiness

Euhad accounts of

of food. In every state in

rope, since

are

vorite vegetable food of the

distress, either directly or indirectly,

want

army

and often work themselves. But this war of extermina-

of destruction

the dreadful

being thinly or fully inhabited, but upon

should they

the rapidity with

which it is increasing, upon the degree in which the yearly in-

tion, sickly seasons,

crease of food approaches to the yearly increase of an unrestricted population. This

and plague advance in terrific array and sweep off their thousands and ten thousands. Should success be still incomplete,

always the nearest in

gigantic inevitable famine stalks in the rear

approximation

is

500

fail in

epidemics, pestilence,

Malthus: Essay on Population and with one mighty blow

levels the

would be imminent and immediate. At

pop-

ulation with the food of the world.

every period during the progress of

Must it not then be acknowledged by an attentive examiner of the histories of mankind that in every age and in every state in which man has existed, or does

vation,

now

mankind, if they were equal. Though the produce of the earth might be increasing every year, population would be increasing much faster, and the redundancy must

That the increase of population by the means of

nec-

is

subsist-

ence.

To

a person

distress

for

be repressed by the periodical

Mr. Condorcet's Esquisse

dun

tableau

under the pressure which terminated in his death. If he had no hopes of its being seen during his life and of its interesting France in his favor, it is a singular instance of the attachment of a man to principles, which every day's experience was

was

written,

it is

said,

of that cruel proscription

the preceding

so fatally for himself contradicting.

the

human mind

in

To

see

one of the most en-

lightened nations of the world, and after a

can-

it

the

historique des progres de I'esprit hurrmin'*

obvious inferences, from a view of the

past and present state of mankind,

garden,

or constant action of misery or vice.

VIII

who draws

of all

a

necessarily

That population does invariably increase the means of subsistence increase. And, That the superior power of population is repressed, and the actual population kept equal to the means of subsistence by misery and vice.

when

CHAPTER

want

food would be constantly pressing on

like

exist:

essarily limited

culti-

from the present moment to the time when the whole earth was become

man

some thousand years, debased by such a fermentation of disgusting passions,

and of society who have noticed the argu-

of fear, cruelty, malice, revenge, ambition,

ment

madness,

not but be a matter of astonishment that all

the writers on the perfectibility of

lapse of

of an overcharged population treat

and

folly

as

would have

dis-

and invariably represent the difficulties arising from it as at a great and almost immeasurable distance.

graced the most savage nation in the most barbarous age must have been such a tre-

Even Mr. Wallace, who thought the argument itself of so much weight as to destroy his whole system of equality, did not seem to be aware that any difficulty would occur from this cause till the whole earth had been cultivated like a garden and was in-

sary

it

always very

slightly,

mendous shock

mind

a

Were

beautiful

this really the case,

system of equality

respects practicable,

I

and were in

other

cannot think that

our ardor in the pursuit of such a scheme to be damped by the contemplation remote a difficulty. An event at such a distance might fairly be left to Providence, but the truth is that if the view

ought of so

of the

argument given

in this essay

be

of the

human

that nothing but the firmest convic-

Sketch for a Historical Picture of the Progress of the Human Mind, written while Condorcet was in hiding from his political enemies. In the Sketch, Condorcet set forth his conception of human history as a continuous progress from barbarism and superstition to reason and enlightenment. He divided history into ten great stages, and he believed that the Sketch was being written near the end of the ninth stage. The tenth stage was to be marked by "the abolition of inequality between nations, the progress of equality within each nation, and the true perfection of mankind" (Translated by June Barraclough. New York: Noonday Press, 1955)— Ed.

capable of any further increase of produce.

to his ideas of the neces-

and inevitable progress

just,

the difficulty, so far from being remote.

501

Great Books Library tion of the truth of his principles, in spite

of

appearances, could have withstood. This posthumous publication is only a all

sketch of a

much

larger

work which he

proposed should be executed. It necessarily, therefore, wants that detail and application which can alone prove the truth of any theory. A few observations will be

show how completely the

sufficient to

ory

is

contradicted

when

it

fund should be estabhshed which should assure to the old an assistance, produced, in part, by their own former savings, and,

by the savings of individuals who making the same sacrifice die before they reap the benefit of it. The same, or a

in part, in

children

give

who

assistance

to

lose their hus-

bands, or fathers and afford a capital to

the-

those

applied to

is

should

fund,

similar

women and

who were

of an age to

found a new

the real, and not to an imaginary, state of

family, sufficient for the proper develop-

things.

ment

treats of the future progress

wards perfection, he in

says, that

of

man

comparing,

ciety.

tivation, their industry,

and

found

it

inefficacious.

By

it

a basis

an extended population will not be performed without the goad of necessity. If by establishments of this kind this spur

just

the idle and upon the same footing with regard to their credit, and the future support of their wives and families, as the active and industrious, can we exto

industry be removed,

if

the negligent are placed

the application of

calculations to the probabilities of life

by preventing

labor necessary to procure subsistence for

afraid that the

proposes

by means

says, that

ress of industry and the activity of commerce less dependent on great capitalists. Such establishments and calculations may appear very promising upon paper, but when applied to real life they will be Mr. found to be absolutely nugatory. Condorcet allows that a class of people which maintains itself entirely by industry is necessary to every state. Why does he allow this? No other reason can well be assigned than that he conceives that the

and well stated, and mode by which he should be removed will be is

he

equally solid, and by rendering the prog-

dependence, and even of misery, which menaces, without ceasing, the most numerous and active class of our societies." difficulty

further,

great fortunes, and yet giving

their

then, a necessary cause of inequality, of

am

still

in the

credit from being the exclusive privilege of

enue of those families that would depend so entirely on the life and health of their chief, ^ he says, very justly, "There exists

I

Going

establish-

made

the protection of the so-

serving a state of equality,

their divisions of

verting afterwards to the precarious rev-

The

These

might be found of more completely pre-

their cul-

means of subsistence, we shall see that it would be impossible to preserve the same means of subsistence, and, consequently, the same population, without a number of individuals who have no other means of supplying their wants than their industry. Having allowed the necessity of such a class of men, and adlabor,

industry.

the just application of calculations,

the different civilized nations of Eu-

and observing

their

name and under

to-

rope, the actual population with the extent of territory,

of

ments, he observes, might be

In the last division of the work, which

and

the interest of money, he proposes that a

pect

to

see

men

exert

that

animated

activity in bettering their condition 1

which

forms the master spring of public prosperity? If an inquisition were to be established to examine the claims of each

now

save time and long quotations, I shall here give the substance of some of Mr. Condorcet's sentiments, and hope I shall not misrepresent them, but I refer the reader to the work itself, which will amuse, if it does not convince him.

To

individual and to determine whether he had or had not exerted himself to the

502

Malthus: Essay on Population utmost, and to grant or refuse assistance

Mr. Condorcet's picture of what expected

pletely destructive of the true principles

and equality. But independent of this great objection to these establishments, and supposing for a moment that they would give no check to productive industry, by far the greatest difficulty remains yet behind. of liberty

Were every man

may be

happen when the number of men shall surpass the means of their subsistence is justly drawn. The oscillation which he describes will certainly take place and will without doubt be a con-

would be little else than a repetition upon a larger scale of the English poor laws and would be comaccordingly, this

to

cause

subsisting

stantly

misery.

The only point

in

periodical

of

which

from Mr. Condorcet with regard picture

the period

is

human

plied to the

sure of a comfortable

thinks that

when race.

it

I

differ

to

this

may be

ap-

Mr. Condorcet

cannot possibly be applic-

it

man

able but at an era extremely distant. If

and were the rising from the "killing frost" of misery, population must rapidly increase. Of this Mr. Condorcet seems to be fully aware himself, and after having described further improvements, he says:

between the natural inand food which I have given be in any degree near the truth, it will appear, on the contrary, that

provision for a family, almost every

would have one, generation

the

free

proportion

crease

the period

progress of industry and happiness, each generation will be called to more extended enjoyments, and in consequence, by the physical constitution of the human frame, to an increase in the number of individuals. Must not there arrive a period then, when these laws, equally necessary, shall counteract each other? When the increase of the number of men surpassing their means of subsistence, the necessary result must be either a continual diminution of happiness and population, a movement truly retrograde, or at least, a kind of oscillation between good and evil? In societies arrived at this term, will not this oscillation be a constantly subsisting cause of periodical misery? Will it not mark the limit when all further amelioration will become impossible, and point out that term to the perfectibility of the human race which it may reach in the course of ages, but can never pass?

He

in

this

does

can

exist

continue

and

at

of

men

sur-

that

this

necessary

cause

to

of mankind, and will forever unless some decided histories

present,

exist,

change take place

in the physical constitu-

tion of our nature.

M,r.

Condorcet, however, goes on to say

which he conceives be so distant ever arrive, the human race, and the advocates for the perfectibility of man, need not be alarmed at it. He then proceeds to remove the difficulty in a manner which I profess not to understand. Having observed that the ridiculous prejudices of superstition would by that time have ceased to throw over morals, a corrupt and degrading austerity, he alludes either to a promiscuous concubinage, which would prevent breeding, or to something else as unnatural. To remove that should the period to

is no person who does not see very distant such a period is from us, but shall we ever arrive at it? It is equally impossible to pronounce for or against the future realization of an event which cannot take place, but at an era when the human race will have attained

we

arrived,

we have had any

There

which

number

of periodical misery, has existed ever since

how

of

the

oscillation, this constantly subsisting

then adds:

improvements,

when

pass their means of subsistence has long since

But

of population

the difficulty in this

way

will,

surely,

in

the opinion of most men, be to destroy that virtue

and purity of manners which

the advocates of equality and of the perfectibility of

at

and object

present scarcely form a conception.

503

man

profess to be the

of their views.

end

Great Books Library

CHAPTER

The cet

IX

of

question which Mr. Condor-

last

proposes for examination is the organic perfectibihty of man. He observes that

the proofs which have been aheady

if

and which,

given will

receive are

itself,

force

development in

the

establish

to

sufficient

perfectibihty

definite

their

in

greater

of

work

the in-

man upon

the

supposition of the same natural faculties

prove that advance in an opposite direction. It may perhaps be said that the world is yet so young, so completely in its infancy, that it ought not to be expected that any diflFerence should appear so soon. If this be the case, there is at once an end of all hvrnian science. The whole train of reasonings from eflFects to causes will be destroyed. We may shut our eyes to the book of natxire, as it will no longer be of any use to read it. The wildest and most improbable conjectures may be advanced with as much certainty as the most just and subhme theories, founded on

to

are susceptible of amelioration?

improvement

the

of

medicine,

from the use of more wholesome food and habitations, from a manner of living which will improve the strength of the body by exercise without impairing it by from the destruction of the two

excess,

great causes of the degradation of man,

and too great

misery

riches,

from the

gradual removal of transmissible and con-

by the improvement of more efficaby the progress of reason and of

tagious disorders

physical knowledge, rendered cious social

order,

he

infers

will not absolutely

that the duration

death

natural

that though

become between

will

man

increase

birth

without

ceasing, will have no assignable term,

may mean

and

word word to

properly be expressed by the

indefinite.

He

then defines

this

to

mode

of

facts

bend

to

estabhshing systems

instead

of

upon

The Newton

will

facts.

old

the

make

systems,

theory of

grand and consistent be placed upon the

as the wild and eccentric hypotheses of Descartes. In short, if the

same footing

a constant approach to

an unlimited extent, without ever reaching it, or an increase in the immensity of ages to an extent greater than any assignable either

again

return

philosophizing and

and

We

and reiterated experiments.

careful

may

immortal, yet his

much

stress upon these some measure tend there has been no marked

lay

prejudices, they will in

organization, these natural faculties them-

From

hfe will to a certain degree vary

would not

and the same organization which he has at present, what will be the certainty, what the extent of our hope, if this selves,

human

from healthy or unhealthy climates, from wholesome or unwholesome food, from virtuous or vicious manners, and other causes, but it may be fairly doubted whether there is really the smallest perceptible advance in the natural duration of human hfe since first we have had any authentic history of man. The prejudices of all ages have indeed been directly contrary to this supposition, and though I

laws of nature are thus fickle and inconstant, if it can be affirmed and be believed that they will change,

when

and

for ages

quantity.

ages they have appeared immutable, the

But surely the application of this term in either of these senses to the duration of human life is in the highest degree unphilosophical and totally unwarranted by any appearances in the laws of nature. Variations from difiFerent causes are essentially distinct from a regular and unretrograde increase. The average duration

human mind citements fixed

in

to

will

no longer have any inbut must remain

inquiry,

inactive torpor,

or

amuse

itself

only in bewildering dreams and extrava-

gant fancies.

The constancy of the laws of nature of effects and causes is the founda-

and

tion of all

504

human knowledge, though

far

Malthus: Essay an Populatwn be it from me to say that the same power which framed and executes the laws of nature mav not change them all "in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye." Such a change may undoubtedly happen. All that

I

mean

to sav

that

is

ment not

it

change

will take place,

make anv

unreasonable

as

it

assertion

aiBrming that the tact

to

as

moon

come

will

therefore

well

calls

With regard

I

human

far

go and no further, that

extent

mav

increase forever

the organic perfectibilitv, or degener-

am

told

that

it

is

a

maxim among

may breed any degree of nicety you please, and they found this maxim upon another, which is that some of the offspring will the improvers of cattle that you

to

from the earhest ages of the world to the present moment the smallest permanent s\Tnptom or indication of increasing proobservable

it

of the general laws of nature.

there does not appear to have existed

The

its

and say so

precise term

and animals, which he says may be regarded as one

in con-

usual time.

to the duration of

its

because the limit of

ation, of the race of plants

in

with the earth tomorrow, as in saying its

mark

that

undefined, because vou can-

and be properly termed indefinite or unhmited. But the fallacy and absurdity of this argimient will suflficiently appear from a shght examination of what Mr. Condorcet

and think

be contradicted

that the sun will rise at

life,

may

w-e

\\'hatever

is

life is

exactly shall

from reasoning. If, without any previous observable s\"mptoms or indications of a change, we can infer that a to infer

rests

human

impossible

is

it

the sandv foundation on which the argu-

possess

the

desirable

qualities

of

the

of

parents in a greater degree. In the famous

climate, habit, diet,

and other causes on have furnished the pretext asserting its indefinite extension; and

Leicestershire breed of sheep, the object

length of

is

Many, I doubt not, will think that the attempting gravely to controvert so absurd a paradox as the immortality of man on earth, or indeed, even the perfectibility of man and society, is a waste of time and words and that such unfounded conjectures

from enlarging the bounds of human it; so far from promoting the improvement of the human mind, they are obstructing it; they are throwing us back again almost into the infancy of knowledge and weakening the

best answered by neglect. I profess, however, to be of a different opinion. When paradoxes of this kind are advanced by ingenious and able men, neglect has no tendency to convince them of their mistakes. Priding themselves on what they conceive to be a mark of the reach and

foundation of that mode of philosophizing, under the auspices of which, science has of late made such rapid advances. The present rage for wide and unrestrained speculation seems to be a kind of mental intoxication, arising, perhaps, from the great and unexpected discoveries which have been made of late years in various branches of science. To men elate and giddy with such successes, everything appeared to be within the grasp of human powers; and, under this illusion, they confounded subjects where no real progress could be proved with those where the progress had been marked, certain, and acknowledged. Could they be persuaded to sober themselves with a little severe and chastised thinking, they would see that the cause of truth and of sound philosophy cannot but suffer by substituting wild flights and unsupported assertions for patient investigation and well authenticated proofs.

longation.^

for

1

eflEects

life

size

of

their

and

o\%-n

understandings,

comprehensiveness

of

of

procure them with small heads and

upon these breed-

far

science, they are contracting

are

extent views,

to

small legs. Proceeding

the their

they will look upon this neglect merely as an indication of poverty and narrowness in the mental exertions of their contemporaries, and only think that the world is not yet prepared to receive their sublime truths.

On

the contrary, a candid investigation accompanied with a perfect readiness to adopt any theor>' warranted by sound philosophy, may have a

of these subjects,

tendency to convince them that in forming improbable and unfounded hypotheses, so

505

Great Books Library ing maxims,

made to grow. He might, however, assert without the smallest chance of being contradicted by a future fact that no carnation or anemone could

we might

evident that

is

it

could ever be

go on till the heads and legs were evanescent quantities, but this is so palpable an absurdity that we may be quite sure

and that though we cannot there really is a see it or say exactly where it is. In this

ever by cultivation be increased to the

degree of

say that he has seen wheat or the largest oak that could ever grow; but he might easily, and with perfect certainty, name a point of magnitude at which they would not

are not just

that the premises

case, the point of the greatest

assignable quantities

dorcet's acceptation of the term.

Though

the largest ear of

arrive. In all these cases, therefore, a care-

I

ful distinction

not be able in the present instance to

mark the ment will

limit at

stop, I

a point at which

the limit

would never be

It

so small as

cannot be true, therefore, that among

animals some

be

|

and animals cannot increase indefinitely in size is that they would fall by their own weight. I answer, how do we know this but from experience? from

'

experience of the degree of strength with

i

know

'

why

rat.

merely undefined.

is

It will

ing to continue forever, the head and legs the head and legs of a

plants

which these bodies are formed.

of the offspring will possess

that a carnation,

the desirable quahties of the parents in

long before

a greater degree, or that animals are in-

the size of a cabbage,

definitely perfectible.

ported by a

fiom

my

perhaps more marked and striking than anything that takes place among animals, yet even here

want

of

The progress

of

wild

a

beautiful garden flower

it

plant

to

is

would be the height

of absurdity

of

among

animals there

though is.

It is

we do

is

tenacity

The reasons

know

only

I

this

the

in

same

of

materials

many

size that

a

substances

would sup-

of the mortality of plants

unknown

to us.

No man

can say why such a plant is annual, another biennial, and another endures for ages. The whole affair in all these cases, in plants, animals, and in the

human I

race,

is

an

and

affair of experience,

only conclude that

man

is

mortal be-

cause the invariable experience of

among

all

ages

has proved the mortality of those materials

a limit to improvement,

not exactly

would not be sup-

but

are at present perfectly

the

plants as well as

reached

experience of the weakness and

in nature of the

be increased ad infinitimi, but this is so gross an absurdity that we may be quite sure that

it

I

port as large a head as a cabbage.

to

was unlimited or most obvious features of the improvement is the increase of size. The flower has grown gradually larger by cultivation. If the progress were really unlimited it might

One

stalk,

its

carnation stalk. There are

assert that the progress indefinite.

made between an

said, perhaps, that the reason

will not arrive. I should

not scruple to assert that, were the breedof these sheep

should be

unlimited progress and a progress where

which further improvecan very easily mention

it

No man can

cabbage.

improvement, or the smallest size of the head and legs, may be said to be undefined, but this is very different from unlimited or from indefinite in Mr. Con-

may

cabbage; and yet there are much greater than a

size of a large

limit,

know where it who

of

which

probable that the gardeners

his visible

body

is

made.

What can we reason but from what we know.

contend for flower prizes have often applied stronger dressing without success. At the same time, it would be highly presumptuous in any man to say that he had

to

seen the finest carnation or anemone that

man on

Sound philosophy

506

alter this

earth

will not authorize

me

opinion of the mortality of till

it

can be clearly proved

Malthus: Essay on Population that

human

the

and

race has made,

said

is

making, a decided progress towards an extent of

inimitable

why

life.

And

the

the

height of their

chief

been

have

to

whitening

very

successful

in

and increasing the race by prudent marriages, skins

adduced the two particular instances from animals and plants was to expose and illustrate, if I could, the fallacy of that argument which infers an unlimited progress, merely because some partial improvement has taken place, and that the limit of this improvement cannot

particularly by that very judicious cross with Maud, the milkmaid, by which some

be precisely ascertained.

wards immortality on

The capacity of improvement in plants and animals, to a certain degree, no person can possibly doubt. A clear and decided progress has already been made, and yet I think it appears that it would be highly absurd to say that this progress has no limits. In human life, though there

very great additional weight that an

reason

I

capital defects in the constitutions of the

family were corrected. It

The

therefore,

man

think,

in

man

to-

to urge the

earth,

life

in-

would give

Mr. Condorcet's book may be considered not only as a sketch of the opinions of a

many

celebrated individual but of

men

of the

France at the beginning of the Revolution. As such, though merely a sketch, it seems worthy of attention. literary

in

CHAPTER

X

reading Mr. Godwin's ingenious and

for the

rest, are

I

argument of population.

to the

foundations,

on which the arguments

organic perfectibility of

necessary,

crease in the duration of

it may be doubted whether, since the world began, any organic improvement whatever in the human frame can be

ascertained.

not be

probability of any approach in

are great variations from different causes,

clearly

will

order more completely to show the im-

Inable

un-

work on

justice,*

political

it

is

usually weak, and can only be considered

impossible not to be struck with the spirit

as mere conjectures. It does not, however, by any means seem impossible that by an

precision of

and energy of his style, the force and some of his reasonings, the

attention to breed a certain degree of improvement, similar to that among animals, might take place among men.

Whether

may be

intellect

a

even

matter

longevity

The

larly,

of

doubt,

are

in

a

but

size,

sions

supposing a small degree of improvement possible, but in not discriminating

to

attempts ancient

of

of

kind,

except

Bickerstaffs,

in

who

air

time,

of truth

to

it

often

He

fails

unwarranted by his sometimes in removing

Enquiry Concerning Political Justice, and on General Virtue and Happi-

Its Influence

ness.

Godwin considered

all

control of

man

by man more or less intolerable, and, in the Enquiry, he argued that "government by its very nature counteracts the improvement of original mind." He was convinced of the perfectibility of man, and he foresaw the day when governments would no longer be necessary, because men would be guided by reason in all of their actions.— Ed.

breed should ever become I know of no well-directed

this

family

are

premises.

between a small improvement, the limit of which is undefined, and an improvement really unlimited. As the human race, however, could not be improved in this way without condemning all the bad specimens to celibacy, it is not probable that general; indeed,

same

philosophy seems to require. His conclu-

to lie

in

an attention

an

must be confessed that he has not proceeded in his enquiries with the caution that sound

trans-

seem

gives

the whole. At the

and perhaps

degree

error does not

with that impressive earnestness of

manner which

could be communicated

strength, beauty, complexion,

missible.

ardent tone of his thoughts, and, particu-

the are

507

Great Books Library which he himself brings too much on general and abstract propositions which will not the

He

certainly

occult cause

relies

admit of application. And

tempt to be the grinding law of necessity, misery, and the fear of misery. The great error under which Mr. Godwin labors throughout his whole work is the attributing almost all the vices and

his conjectures

modesty

the

outstrip

far

of

nature.

The system of equality which Mr. Godwin proposes is, without doubt, by far the most beautiful and engaging of any that has

An

appeared.

yet

amelioration

as some mysterious and and which he does not atinvestigate, will be found to

mentions

thus

objections

forward.

misery that are seen in

human

of

be produced merely by reason wears much more the promise of permanence than any change eflFected and maintained by force. The unlimited exercise of private judgment is a doctrine inexpressibly grand and captivating and has a vast superiority over those systems where every individual is

society

civil

Political

institutions.

to

regulations

society to

and

and

property are with him the fruitful sources

conviction

of

the

the hotbeds of

evil,

all

administration

established

a true state of the case,

all

Were

that degrade mankind.

it

of

the crimes this

really

would not seem

a hopeless task to remove evil completely

without emotions of delight

from the world, and reason seems to be the proper and adequate instrument for eflFecting so great a purpose. But the truth is that, though human institutions appear to be the obvious and obtrusive causes of much mischief to mankind, yet, in reality they are light and superficial; they are mere feathers that float on the surface in comparison with those deeper seated

and admiration, accompanied with ardent

causes of impurity that corrupt the springs

in a

manner the

slave of the public.

The

substitution of benevolence as the master

spring and instead

of

moving

principle

self-love,

of

devoutly to be wished. In short, possible to contemplate the fair structure

longing for the period of

ment. But,

alas!

that

society,

consummation

a

is

is

im-

whole of

this

its

it

and render turbid the whole stream

accomplish-

human

moment can never

arrive. The whole is little better than a dream, a beautiful phantom of the imagination. These "gorgeous palaces" of happi-

Mr. Godwin,

and immortality, these "solemn temples" of truth and virtue will dissolve, "like the baseless fabric of a vision,"

we awaken

"The

says,

ness

in his

attendant on

fits

and the

when

lished

are

administration

alike

hostile

these

spirit of fraud,

growth of the estab-

are the immediate

and contemplate the true and genuine situation of man on

chapter on the bene-

system of equality,

a

spirit of oppression, the spirit

of servility,

to real life

to

of

They

property.

intellectual

improve-

ment. The other vices of envy, malice, inseparable com-

earth.

and revenge are

Mr. Godwin, at the conclusion of the third chapter of his eighth book, speaking

panions. In a state of society where

of population, says.

human

in is

society,

perpetually kept

means of the wandering

of

life.

their

lived in the midst of plenty

There is a principle by which population

these sentiments

down

The narrow

all

to the level of

among

men

and where

shared alike the bounties of nature,

would

inevitably expire.

principle of selfishness

would

No man

never find through the lapse of ages that population has so increased as to

being obliged to guard his little store or provide with anxiety and pain for his restless wants, each would lose his individual existence in the thought of

render necessary

the general good.

the

subsistence. tribes of

Thus,

vanish.

America and Asia,

we

the

earth." This principle,

cultivation

of

the

which Mr. Godwin

enemy 508

to

his

No man would be

neighbor,

for

an

they would

Malthns: Essay on Population have no subject of contention; and, of consequence, philanthropy would resume the empire which reason assigns her. Mind would be delivered from her perpetual anxiety about corporal support, and free to expatiate in the field of thought, which is

congenial to her. Each would assist the

enquiries of

all."

This would, indeed, be a happy

might be expected to press under so perfect a form of society. A theory that will not admit of application cannot possibly be just. Let us suppose

and vice

the causes of misery

all

War and

removed.

in this Island

Unwholesome trades and manufactories do not exist. Crowds no

contention cease.

state.

longer collect together in great and pesti-

But that it is merely an imaginary picture, with scarcely a feature near the truth,

lent cities for purposes of court intrigue,

the

reader,

am

I

cannot

midst of plenty.

bauchery. There are no towns sufficiently

take place of drinking, gaming, and de-

live in the

cannot share

All

Were

nature.

bounties

the

alike

of

large

there no established adminis-

tration of property, every

to

have any prejudicial

human

the

man would be

obliged to guard with force his Selfishness

gratifications.

Simple, healthy, and rational amusements

is

well convinced.

Man

commerce, and vicious

of

already too

afraid,

of the

constitution.

happy inhabitants

The

on

eflFects

greater part

of this terrestrial

paradise live in hamlets and farmhouses

little store.

would be triumphant. The sub-

over the face of the country.

scattered

contention would be perpetual.

Every individual mind would be under

Every house is clean, roomy, and in a healthy

a constant anxiety about corporal support,

are equal.

The

And

necessary labors of agriculture

jects

of

and not a

single intellect

would be

left

How

Mr. Godwin has turned the

little

attention of his penetrating real state of

man on

mind

Island

by

to reason thus

all

great

is

distance.

habitable globe

already

parts

immeasurable centuries

may

of

pass

is

uncultivated. are

improvement. still

it

increasing

of

Myriads

of

impartial

be the same as

to

spirit of

justice, all

at

benevolence, guided the

will

divide

members

would be impossible

this

of the

Though

that they should

have animal food every day, yet vegemeat occasionally, would satisfy the desires of a frugal people and would be sufficient to preserve them in health, strength, and spirits. Mr. Godwin considers marriage

population

away, and the earth be

The num-

table food, with

The

capable

all.

society according to their wants.

Three fourths of the

now

suppose

The

produce among

to foresee difficulties at

cultivated

we

present.

earth will sufficiently

appear from the manner in which he endeavors to remove the difficulty of an overcharged population. He says, "The obvious answer to this objection is that a

among

ber of persons and the produce of the

the

to

the

men

labors of luxury are at end.

are shared amicably

free to expatiate in the field of thought.

sufficiently

airy,

situation. All

as

a

fraud and a monopoly. Let us suppose the

still

upon

commerce

of the sexes established

inhabitants."

principles

of

of supposing that no distress

have already pointed out the error and difficulty would arise from an overcharged popula-

Mr. Godwin does not think himself that this freedom would lead to a promiscuous

tion before

with him. The love of variety

found

sufficient for the subsistence of its

I

intercourse,

the earth absolutely refused

the

and

most perfect freedom.

in this

I

perfectly agree is

a vicious,

and unnatural taste and could not prevail in any great degree in a simple and virtuous state of society. Each man would probably select himself as a partner,

produce any more. But let us imagine for a moment Mr. Godwin's beautiful system of equality realized in its utmost purity, and see how soon this difficulty

corrupt,

to

509

Great Books Library

whom he would adhere as long as that adherence continued to be the choice of both parties. It would be of httle consequence, according to Mr. Godwin, how

to

many

children a

woman had

or to

whom

they belonged. Provisions and assistance would spontaneously flow from the quarter

which they abounded to the quarter that was deficient. And every man would be ready to furnish instruction to the in

rising generation according to his capacity. I

cannot conceive a form of society so

taken place throughout

present

at

supposing no

anxiety

support of children to ceive that there a

hundred,

of

as

we

this

in

a

With

these

encourage-

extraordinary

and every cause of depopulation, as we have supposed, removed, the numbers would necessarily increase faster than in any society that has ever yet been known. I have mentioned, on the authority of a pamphlet published by a Dr. Styles and referred to by Dr. Price, that the inhabitants of the back settlements of America doubled their numbers in fifteen years. England is certainly a more healthy country than the back settlements of America, and as we have supposed every house in the Island to be airy and wholesome, and the encouragements to have a family greater even than with the back settlers, no probable reason can be assigned why the poputo population,

lation should not

possible,

we

itself

than fifteen years.

quite sure that truth,

double

we do

will only

in less,

But

to

which

in the

known

to

and who

reflects

soil in

on

the

of the lands already in cultivation,

year without dressing.

None

of the

lands in England will answer to this description. Difiicult, however, as it might be to double the average produce of the Island in twenty-five years, let us suppose it

effected.

At the expiration of the

first

period, therefore, the food, though almost

if

entirely vegetable,

be

would be

sufiicient to

support in health the doubled population

not go beyond the

well

much who is

or

scheme might defeat itself. The soil of England will not produce much without dressing, and cattle seem to be necessary to make that species of manure which best suits the land. In China it is said that the soil in some of the provinces is so fertile as to produce two crops of rice

of fourteen million.

suppose the period of is

such,

person

use of animal food. Yet a part of this

During the next period of doubling where will the food be found to satisfy

doubling to be twenty-five years, a ratio of increase

a

and the barrenness of those that are not cultivated, will be very much disposed to doubt whether the whole average produce could possibly be doubled in twenty -five years from the present period. The only chance of success would be the ploughing up all the grazing countries and putting an end almost entirely to the

family.

ments

Yet with

exertions,

country,

fertility

about the future do not conwithout

probable that the half of

acquainted with the nature of the this

exist, I

twenty-three,

purpose.

greater

are

would be one woman

It is

every man's time must be employed for

unshackled intercourse, on the contrary, would be a most powerful incite-

and

doubt that the which we have

to

sufiicient.

entering into that state.

to early attachments,

little

would tend augment the produce of the country. But to answer the demands of a population increasing so rapidly, Mr. Godwin's calculation of half an hour a day for each man would certainly not be greatly

An

ment

be

directed chiefly to agriculture,

undoubtedly

constituted,

many from

the northern

supposed, added to the circumstance of the labor of the whole community being

upon the whole to population. The irremediableness of marriage, as it deters

can

There

equalization of property

favorable

is

all

America.

states of

have

510

Malthus: Essay on Population

demands

the importunate

numbers. Where

of the increasing

up? Where is the dressing necessary to improve that which is already in cultivation? There is no person with the smallest knowledge of land but would say that it was impossible that the average produce of the country could be increased during the second twenty-five years by a quantity equal to what it at present yields. Yet we will suppose this increase, however improbable,

take place.

to

No human

institutions here existed,

of

men. them between public and private good. No monopoly had been created of those advantages which reason directs to be left in common. No man had been goaded to the breach of order bv unjust laws. Benevolence had established her reign in all hearts; and yet, in so short a period as opposition had been produced bv

within

years,

fiftv

violence,

oppression,

be divided among twenty-

form of distress, which degrade and sadden the present state of society, seem to have been generated bv the most imperious circumstances, bv laws inherent in the nature of man and absolutely independent of all human regulations.

fabric

ever)'

is

If

The

us but look for a

see

the

moment

into the next

twent)'-eight

million

we

himian

ulation million,

chilling

would be one hundred and twelve and the food only sufficient for

thirty-five

had vanished reappear. The mighty law of self-preservation expels all the softer and more exalted emotions of the soul. The

million unprovided for. In these ages

to

nature

plucked before

to it

of

vices

too

is

ripe,

strong

com

The

resist.

unfair proportions, train

are

evil

all this

for

flow

in

for

the

of

time

we

are supposing the produce

and the

speculator can imagine.

undoubtedly a very different from population from that which Mr. Godwin gives, when he says, "Myriads of centuries of still increasing population may pass away, and the eaith be still found sufficient for the This

falsehood

support

sevent\'-seven

yearly increase greater than the boldest

are immediately generated. Provisions no

longer

leaving

of the earth absolutely unlimited,

is

and the whole black to

million,

want would be indeed triumphant, and rapine and murder must reign at large; and yet,

or secreted in

that belong

shall

beings

without the means of support; and before the conclusion of the first century the pop-

spirit

and invigorated

repressed by

are not yet too well convinced of

period of twenty-five years, and

imagination vanishes

of

we

the reality of this melanchoh' picture, let

breath of want. The hateful passions that

temptations

to

Godwin

Mr.

\\'hich

ascribes the original sin of the worst

No

The exuberant

severe touch of truth.

human

till

resumes his wonted triumphant over the

falsehood, misery, every hateful vice, and

to

plenty,

few bosoms,

a

support of twent)'-one million

of benevolence, cherished

by

it

perverseness

the

Alas! What becomes of the picture where men hved in the midst of plenty, where no man was obUged to provide with anxiety and pain for his restless wants, where the narrow principle of selfishness did not exist, where Mind was dehvered from her perpetual anxiety about corporal support, and free to expatiate in the field of thought which is congenial to her. This

at the

self-love

empire and lords

eight million.

beautiful

in

expiring struggles,

faint

world.

any concession. Even with this concession, however, there would be seven million at the expiration of the second term unprovided for. A quantity of food equal

would be

length

at

strength of the argument allows of almost

to the frugal

lingering

yet

lence,

makes some

the fresh land to turn

is

view

the

mother with a large family. The children are sickly from insufiicient food. The rosy flush of health gives place to the pallid

cheek and hollow eye of misery. Benevo-

is

of the difficult)' arising

subsistence of

511

its

inhabitants."

Great Books Library

am

I

every man was perand ready to supply the wants of his neighbor. But that the question was no longer whether one man should give to another that which he did not use himself, but whether he should give to his neighbor the food which was absolutely necessary to his own existence. It would be represented that the number of those that were in want very greatly exceeded the number and means of those who should

aware that the redun-

suflBciently

possessed the

dant twenty-eight million or seventy-seven million that I have mentioned could never

have

existed. It

ciple in tion

is

is

a perfectly just observa-

Mr. Godwin that "There

tion of

human

fectly

society,

perpetually kept

a prin-

is

by which popula-

down

to the level

means of subsistence." The sole question is, what is this principle? Is it some obscure and occult cause? Is it some mysterious interference of heaven, which the

of

at a certain period strikes the

men with

least, as

willing

supply them, that these pressing wants,

impotence and the women with barrenness? Or is it a cause open to our researches, within our view, a cause which

which from the

has constantly been observed to operate,

that these violations

though with varied force, in every state in which man has been placed? Is it not a degree of misery, the necessary and in-

the increase of food and would,

institutions, so far

may be curious we have been

duce should, all

supposing,

it

they

was

quence who labored the

they

lived

of

in

little

least,

if

that

possible, in

order

be obtained to

effect

at

this

It

might be urged, perhaps, by some

objectors that as the fertility of the land

increased and various accidents occurred,

some men might be much and that when the reign of self-love was once established they would not distribute their surplus produce without some compensation in return. It would be observed, in answer, that this was an inconvenience greatly to be lamented, but that it was an evil which bore no comparison to the black train of distresses that would inevitably be occasioned by the insecurity of property, that the quantity of food which one man could consume was necessarily limited by the narrow capacity of the human stomach, that it was not certainly probable that he should throw away the rest, but the share of

more than

the

conse-

or

events,

itself.

dangerous situation of the country would be while

if

first,

how some

stated in the strongest terms. It that,

had already checked

great, and indispensable purpose, it would be advisable to make a more complete division of land, and to secure every man's stock against violation by the most powerful sanctions, even by death

to observe, in the case

which at present govern civilwould be successively dictated by the most imperious necessity. As man, according to Mr. Godwin, is the creature of the impressions to which he is subject, the goadings of want could not continue long before some violations of public or private stock would necessarily take place. As these violations increased in number and extent, the more active and comprehensive intellects of the society would soon perceive that, while population was fast increasing, the yearly produce of the country would shortly begin to diminish. The urgency of the case would suggest the necessity of some immediate measures to be taken for the general safety. Some kind of convention would then be called, and

midst of plenty,

oc-

to dictate that a yearly increase of pro-

ized society

observed

had

which

of the laws

the

produce of the

gratified,

from aggravat-

have tended considerably to mitigate, though they never can remove? It

be

casioned some flagrant violations of justice,

ing,

that

all

were not by some means or other prevented, throw the whole community in confusion, that imperious necessity seemed

evitable result of the laws of nature,

human

state of the

country could not

who 512

sufficient for their support,

Malthus: Essay on Population that even

if

he exchanged

his surplus

himself and innocent children in miser)'

food

and made them in some degree dependent on him, this would still be better than that these others should

some express

absolutely starve.

every

and want.

for the labor of others,

The

on the

for the evils

ficulties that

The view rior

would come im-

who had

It

diflBculties

community labored felt

own

the

secure that

all his

well provided for

under which the

that while every

children

man

would be

by general benevolence,

the powers of the earth would be absolutely

And

starve.

suflBcient to

When,

It

should

support their

therefore, a

woman

to prevent the frequent recur-

be highly unjust

which would inevitably ensue; that even if the whole attention and labor of the society were directed to this sole point and if, by the most perfect security of property and every other encouragement that could be thought of, the greatest possible increase of produce were yearly obulation

still,

children.

man.

in the

women

rence of such an inconvenience, as

inadequate to produce food for the pop-

tained, yet

woman, than

was connected with a man who had entered into no compact to maintain her children and, aware of the inconveniences that he might bring upon himself, had deserted her, these children must necessarily fall for support upon the society or

tvimed their attention to the true

cause of the

supposed.

disgrace which attends a breach of

have resources

commerce between would be urged by those is

children,

of these diflBculties presents

could not be expected that

der discussion, intimately connected with the sexes.

we have

chastity in the

the preceding,

on

obligation

own

support his

us with a very natural origin of the supe-

which were pressing

subject that

implied

or

to

reasonings in a community under the dif-

society.

The next

man

seems to be the natural result of these

It seems highly probable, therefore, that an administration of property, not very diflFerent from that which prevails in civilized states at present, would be established as the best, though inadequate,

remedy

institution of marriage, or at least of

fault

by personal

men might

to

it

would

punish so natural a

restraint or infliction, the

agree to punish

it

with

dis-

more obvious and conspicuous in the woman, and less liable to any mistake. The father of a child may not always be known, but the same grace.

The

offense

is

besides

uncertainty cannot easily exist with regard

that the increase of food

would by no means keep pace with the much more rapid increase of population; that some check to population, therefore, was imperiously called for; that the most natural and obvious check seemed to be

to the mother.

Where

the evidence of the

the means of support; that where this not-

was most complete, and the inconvenience to the society at the same time the greatest, there it was agreed that the largest share of blame should fall. The obligation on every man to maintain his children the society would enforce, if there were occasion; and the greater degree of inconvenience or labor, to which a family would necessarily subject him, added to some portion of disgrace which every human being must incur who leads another

withstanding was the case,

into unhappiness,

essary, for the

a suflBcient punishment for the man.

to

make every man provide

for his

offense

own

would operate, in some respect, as a measure and guide in the increase of population, as it might be expected that no man would bring beings children; that this

into the

world for

whom

he could not find

it seemed necexample of others, that the disgrace and inconvenience attending such a conduct should fall upon the individual who had thus inconsiderately plunged

might be considered

as

That a woman should at present be almost driven from society for an offense which men commit nearly with impunity

513

Great Books Library be undoubtedly a breach of natBut the origin of the custom, the most obvious and effectual method

seems

should

to

as

community, appears to be natural, though not perhaps perfectly justifiable. This origin, however, a serious inconvenience to a

now

lost

the

in

new

train

afford assistance to greater numbers. All

who were

in want of food would be urged by imperious necessity to offer their labor

ideas

of

which the custom has since generated. What at first might be dictated by state necessity is now supported by female delicacy, and operates with the greatest force on that part of society, where, if the original intention of the custom were preserved, there

is

in

own

these two fundamental laws of

and the were once established, inequality of conditions must necessarily follow. Those who were bom after the division of property would come into a world already possessed. If their parents, from having too large a family, could not give them sufficient for their support, what are they to do in a world where everything is appropriated? We have seen the fatal effects that would result to a society if every man had a valid claim to an equal share of the produce of the earth. The members of a family which was grown institution of marriage,

in

much

On

demand

this

And

thus

it

appears that a society con-

according to the most beautiful form that imagination can conceive, with

position in

of distinction.

seems both natural and

upon

a

particular

just that,

occasions,

their

moving

principle, in-

all

members corrected by

its

reason and not force, would, from the

in-

and not from any man, in a very short

evitable laws of nature,

of sur-

some

And

its

stead of self-love, and with every evil dis-

distinguishing criterion, ex-

more obvious mark

or de-

stituted

plus produce to supply. Moral merit

plus produce would, in general, seek

stationariness,

crease of population.

benevolence for

The owners

among known depends. And on

happiness, or degree of misery, de-

pends the increase,

The number of these claimants would soon exceed the ability of the sur-

cept in extreme cases.

No man

the state of this fund, the happiness,

state at present chiefly

appeared that

is

shares.

larger

the lower classes of people in every

blank.

difficult

the

or the degree of misery, prevailing

from the inevitable laws of our nature some human beings must suffer from want. These are the unhappy persons who, in the great lottery of life, have drawn a

very

of land

When

consumption.

vided

a part of the surplus produce of others as a debt of justice. It has

appropri-

would exchange his labor without receiving an ample quantity of food in return. Laborers would live in ease and comfort and would, consequently, be able to rear a numerous and vigorous offspring.

too large for the original division of land

could not then

absolutely

The fund

beyond their demands upon this fund were great and numerous, it would naturally be divided in very small shares. Labor would be ill paid. Men would offer to work for a bare subsistence, and the rearing of families would be checked by sickness and misery. On the contrary, when this fund was increasing fast, when it was great in proportion to the number of claimants, it would be di-

by the owners

sessed

the least real occasion for

it

article so

this

ated to the maintenance of labor would be the aggregate quantity of food pos-

society, the security of property

appropriated to

exchange for

essential to existence.

it.

When

able and

duce, and thus at once benefiting the community and enabhng these proprietors to

of preventing the frequent recurrence of

is

upon those who were

fall

professed themselves willing to exert their strength in procuring a further surplus pro-

ural justice.

original depravity of

period

it

degenerate

upon

structed

choice

ferent from that

514

into

a

society

con-

a plan not essentially dif-

except

which prevails

in

every

Malthus: Essay on Population

known

state at present; I

mean

CHAPTER

a society

divided into a class of proprietors, and a class

of laborers,

main spring

and with

self-love

We

have supposed Mr. Godwin's system of societ)- once completely established. But it is supposing an impossibiht) The same causes in nature which would destrov it so rapidl\\ were it once estabhshed, would prevent the possibifity of its establishment. And upon what grounds we can presume a change in these

the

of the great machine.

In the supposition I have made, I have undoubtedly taken the increase of population smaller and the increase of produce greater than they really would be. No reason can be assigned why, under the circumstances I have supposed, population should not increase faster than in any known instance. If then we were to take the period of doubling at fifteen years, instead of twent\-five years, and reflect upon the labor necessary to double the produce in so short a time, even if we allow it possible, we may ventvire to pronounce with certaint)^- that if Mr. Godwin's system of societv' was established in its utmost perfection, instead of myriads of centuries,

not thirty years

before

utter destruction

its

could

.

conjecture.

tion of the passion

taken place in the the decline of

elapse

sum

vain and

know,

how much

from

repeated

men

against

futile,

such

may

pleasures

as

and unproductive of lastBut the pleasures of pure

love will bear the contemplation of the

most

improved

reason,

and

exalted virtue. Perhaps there

is

the

most

scarcely a

man who

has once experienced the gendehght of virtuous love, however great his intellectual pleasures may have

uine

been, that does not look back to the period as the

We

sunny spot

in his

whole life, where which he re-

his imagination loves to bask,

experience,

misery and hardship

of this passion to contribute to

ing satisfaction.

such governments as at present exist in Europe, or submit to the extreme hardwell

in

of pleasurable sensations in Hfe.

inveigh

well

essen-

regions.

Men

ages de-

as the comforts of their age, cor-

selves,

must be completely destroyed its members would volunconsent to leave it and live under

new

all

poral debiht)' and mental remorse,

principle

setders in

in

Those who have spent their youth in criminal excesses and have prepared for them-

before any of

first

have

incompetent judges with regard to

ver\-

the

ships of

life

Those who from coldness of contemperament have never felt what love is will surely be allowed to be

have taken no notice of emigration for obvious reasons. If such societies were instituted in other parts of Europe, these countries would be under the same difficulties with regard to population and could admit no fresh members into their bosoms. If this beautiful societ)' were confined to this Island, it must have degenerated strangely from its original purity, and administer but a very small portion of the

tarily

thousand

stitutional

I

tial

or six

five

success.

power

its

towards the extinc-

between the sexes has

claimed against a passion which they have ceased to feel, but with as little reason as

from the sim-

proposed; in short,

utterlv at a loss to

years that the world has existed.

the

it

I am No move

natural causes,

ple principle of population.

happiness

XI

collects

regrets,

will

undergo in their own country before they can determine to desert it; and how often the most tempting proposals of embarking for new settiements have been rejected by people who appeared to be almost starving.

five

and contemplates with the fondest and which he would most wish to

over again. The superiorit)' of

intel-

lectual to sensual pleasures consists rather in their fiUing

up more

time, in their hav-

ing a larger range, and in their being less

hable to satiety, than in their being more real

515

and

essential.

Great Books Library Intemperance feats

own

its

every enjoyment de-

in

purpose.

A

walk

car.

It

symmetry

"the

is

of person,

the affectionate kindness of feelings, the

day through the most beautiful country, if pursued too far, ends in pain and fatigue. The most wholesome and invigorating food, eaten with an unrestrained appetite, produces weakness instead of strength. Even intellectual pleasures, though cer-

woman

imagination and the wit" of a

that

and not the

the passion of love,

excite

mere distinction of her being a female. Urged by the passion of love, men have been driven into acts highly prejudicial general interests

tainly less liable than others to satiety, pur-

to

sued with too

probably they would have found no

little

the

vivacity, the voluptuous softness of temper,

in the finest

intermission, debilitate

the

of

had

culty in resisting the temptation

body and impair the vigor of the mind. To argue against the reality of these pleasthe

but

society,

diffi-

ap-

it

ures from their abuse seems to be hardly

form of a woman with no other attractions whatever but her sex. To

Godwin,

strip sensual pleasures of all their adjuncts,

just. is

Morality, according to Mr.

a calculation of consequences,

or,

peared

deprive a magnet of some of

Archdeacon Paley very justly expresses it, the will of God, as collected from general expediency. According to either of these

sential causes

say that In

attended

definitions, a sensual pleasure not

and

if it

it is

the

of attraction,

weak and

pursuit

of

is

to

most

es-

and then

to

its

inefficient.

every

enjoyment,

whether sensual or intellectual, reason, that faculty which enables us to calculate consequences, is the proper corrective and

with the probability of unhappy consequences does not offend against the laws of morality,

order to prove their inferiority,

in

as

in the

be pursued with such

probable, therefore, that im-

a degree of temperance as to leave the

guide.

most ample room for intellectual attainments, it must undoubtedly add to the sum

proved reason will always tend to prevent the abuse of sensual pleasures, though it by no means follows that it will extinguish

of pleasurable sensations in love, exalted

by

Virtuous

life.

friendship, seems to

that sort of mixture of sensual

and

be

It

is

them.

have endeavored to expose the fallacy argument which infers an unlimited progress from a partial improvement, the limits of which cannot be exactly as-

intel-

I

enjoyment particularly suited to the nature of man, and most powerfully calculated to awaken the sympathies of the soul, and produce the most exquisite grati-

of that

fications.

which a decided progress has been observed, where yet it would be a gross absurdity to suppose that progress indefinite. But towards the extinction of the passion between the sexes no observable progress whatever has hitherto been made. To suppose such an

lectual

there are

Mr. Godwin evident

certained. It has appeared,

says, in order to

inferiority

sense, "Strip the

the

of

commerce

show the

pleasures

of

of the sexes of

its attendant circumstances, and it would be generally despised." He might as well say to a man who admired trees: strip them of their spreading branches and lovely foliage, and what beauty can you see in a bare pole? But it was the tree with the branches and foliage, and not without

all

extinction, therefore,

that

is

merely

to offer

an

unfounded conjecture, unsupported by any philosophical probabilities. It is

a truth, which history

I

am

afraid

ex-

not only to a moderate but even to an

One

as distinct,

makes too

feature

and

gate as any two things the most remote, as

a beautiful

think,

emotions from the aggre-

may be

cite as different

I

instances in

some men of the highest mental powers have been addicted

them, that excited admiration. of an object

many

woman and

a

map

of

clear,

that

immoderate indulgence in the pleasures But allowing, as I should

Madagas-

of sensual love.

516

Malthus: Essay on Population

some unexpected word,

numer-

tions

excited

ous instances to the contrary-, that great

by a

letter that

intellectual exertions tend to diminish the

the most extraordinary revolutions in our

empire of this passion over man, it is evident that the mass of mankind must be improved more highlv than the brightest ornaments of the species at present before an\- difference can take place sufficient

frame, accelerates the circulation, causes

be inclined

to do, notsvithstanding

sensiblv to affect population.

I

b\'

delivered to us, occasions

is

the heart to palpitate, the tongue to refuse its office,

and has been known

to occasion

death by extreme anguish or extreme joy. There is nothing indeed of which the phv-

would h\

is more mind in

sician

a\\are than of the

the

assisting

power

of

no means suppose that the mass of mankind has reached its term of improvement, but the principal argument of this essay

valescence."

tends to place in a strong point of view the

instances of the effects of mental stimu-

The

or

retarding

con-

instances here mentioned are chiefl\"

ficiently free

on the bodilv frame. Xo person has for a moment doubted the near, though mysterious, connection of mind and

tain

bod^.

improbabilit\'

that

the

lo\\"er

classes

lants

of

ever

people in any countr)- should ever be suf-

from want and labor to obanv high degree of intellectual improvement.

But knowledge

it

arguing totalh" without

is

of the nature of stimulants to

suppose either that they can be applied

CHAPTER

continuallv with equal strength, or

XII

immortaht\- on earth seems to be rather

oddiv placed

in a

chapter which professes

remove the objection

to his s\stem of from the principle of population. Unless he supposes the passion between the sexes to decrease faster than the duration of life increases, the earth would be more encumbered than ever. But leaving this difficult\- to Mr. Godwin, let us examine a few of the appearances from which the probable immortalit\- of man is

equalits'

inferred.

To prove

the

power

of the

mind over

Mr. Godwin observes, "How often do we find a piece of good news disthe

ma}'

body,

sipating a distemper?

How common

is

remark that those accidents which are

who

the

those

fix

slight

disorders

the attention of a

has nothing else to think

of;

but

of

man this

does not tend to prove that activity of

to

will enable a man to disregard a high fever, the smallpox, or the plague.

mind

gotten and extirpated in the busy and ac-

The man who walks twent}' miles with a motive that engrosses his soul does not attend to his slight fatigue of body when he

walk twent}" miles in an indolent temper and am extremely fatigued. I walk twenty miles fuU of ardor, and with a motive that engrosses my soul, and I come in as fresh and as alert as when I began my journey. Emo-

and

disregard

frame which

the indolent a source of disease are for-

tive?

thev

would not exhaust and wear out the subject. In some of the cases here noticed, the strength of the stimulus depends upon its novelts' and unexpectedness. Such a stimulus cannot, from its nature, be repeated often with the same effect, as it would by repetition lose that property which gives it its strength. In the other cases, the argument is from a small and partial effect to a great and general effect, which will in numberless instances be found to be a ver\- fallacious mode of reasoning. The bus\- and active man may in some degree counteract or, what is perhaps nearer the truth,

conjecture respecting the Mr. Godwin's future approach of man towards

to

if

could be so applied, for a time, that they

I

half determined

comes in; but double his motive, and set him to walk another t\vent\' miles, quadruple it, and let him start a third time, and

517

Great Books Library so on,

their riders in their strength

and the length of his walk will uldepend upon muscle and not

mind. Powell" for a motive of ten guineas,

not at

all

tired

in

his

first

Another day, perhaps, going over same extent of ground with a good deal of sport, I have come home fresh and alert. The difference in the sensation of fatigue upon coming in on the different days may have been very striking, but on the following mornings I have found no such difference. I have not per-

nearly the

walk of

twenty miles, because he did not appear to be so, or, perhaps, scarcely felt any fatigue himself. The mind cannot fix its attention strongly on more than one object at once. The twenty thousand pounds so engrossed his thoughts that he did not attend to any slight soreness of foot or ness of limb. But

had he been

ceived that

is

When

was

I

my

less stiff in

limbs or

on the morning after the day of the sport than on the other morning. less footsore

upon the by taking off the attention from the bodily fatigue than by really and truly counteracting it. If the energy of my mind had really counteracted In

stiflF-

all

these cases, stimulants

mind seem

really as

fresh and as alert as when he first set off, he would be able to go the second twenty miles with as much ease as the first, and so on, the third, etc., which leads to a

palpable absurdity.

feeling a consider-

tigue.

twenty-four hours.

This statement of the case shows the fallacy of supposing that the person was really

home

able degree of uncomfortableness from fa-

would not make him walk in

I

quently returned

a frame of moderate strength would, permake the man kill himself by his it

effect,

When

haps,

an hundred miles

spirits,

and make them tire sooner. have taken a long walk with my gun, and met with no success, I have fre-

and

would have walked further probably than Mr. Godwin, for a motive of half a million. A motive of uncommon power acting upon

exertions, but

and

but towards the end of a hard day the previous fatigue would have its full weight

timately

a horse of spirit

to act rather

the fatigue of

my

tired the next

morning?

body,

why If

should

I feel

the stimulus of

the hounds had as completely overcome

nearly half tired, by the stimulus of the

added to the proper management of the bit, he may be put so much upon his mettle that he would appear to a standerby as fresh and as high spirited as if he had not gone a mile. Nay, probably, the horse himself, while in the heat and passion occasioned by this stimulus, would not feel any fatigue; but it would be strangely contrary to all reason and experience to argue from such an appearance that if the stimulus were continued the horse would never be tired. The cry of a pack of hounds will make some horses, after a journey of forty miles on the road, appear as fresh and as lively as when they first set out. Were they then to be hunted, no perceptible abatement would at first be felt by

the fatigue of the journey in reality, as

spur,

did in appearance,

be

why

tired sooner than

the forty miles?

bad

fit

writing tion, I

I

if

he had not gone to have a very

happen

of the toothache at the time this.

every

it

should the horse

I

am

In the eagerness of composi-

now and

then, for a

moment

cannot help thinking that the process which causes the pain

or two, forget

it.

Yet

I

going forwards, and that the nerves which carry the information of it to the brain are even during these moments demanding attention and room for their ap-

is still

propriate vibrations. vibrations

The

multiplicity

of another kind

of

may perhaps

prevent their admission, or overcome them for a time when admitted, till a shoot of extraordinary energy puts

all

other vibra-

tions to the rout, destroys the vividness of

my

Foster Powell (1734-1793), English longdistance walker.— Ed.

argvimentative conceptions, and rides

triumphant in the brain. In

518

this case, as

Malthus: Essay on Population in the others, the tle

or no

power

mind seems

have

to

ht-

in counteracting or curing

the disorder, but merely possesses a power, if

strong!)' excited,

of fixing

attention

its

on other subjects. I do not, however, mean to say that a sound and vigorous mind has no tendency whatever to keep the body in a similar state. So close and intimate is the union of mind and body that it would be highly extraordinary- if they did not mutually assist each other's functions. But, perhaps, a comparison, the body has more upon the mind than the mind upon the body. The first object of the mind is to

upon

the consequent probability of the immor-

tahty of man, are of this latter description, and could such stimulants be continually

apphed, instead of tending to immortalize, they would tend very rapidly to destroy

human frame. The probable increase of the voluntary power of man over his animal frame comes the

under Mr. Godwin's consideration, and he concludes by saying that the voluntary' power of some men, in this respect, is found to extend to various articles in which other men are impotent. But this is

next

reasoning against an almost universal rule from a few exceptions; and these excep-

effect

act as purveyor to the wants of the body.

tions

When

that

these wants are completely satisfied,

an active mind is indeed apt to wander further, to range over the fields of science,

I

it

has "shuffled

is

seeking

off this

to

be rather

tricks

than powers

exerted to any good purpose.

have never heard of any

man who

could

regulate his pulse in a fever, and doubt

much, if any of the persons here alluded to have made the smallest perceptible

or sport in the regions of imagination, to

fancy that

seem

may be

mortal

vain exer-

progress in the regular correction of the disorders of their frames and the conse-

hare in the fable. The slowly the body, never fails to

quent prolongation of their lives. Mr. Godwin says, "Nothing can be more

overtake the mind, however widely and extensively it may have ranged, and the

unphilosophical than to conclude, that, be-

brightest and most energetic

the train of

and

coil,"

But

kindred element.

its

all these efforts are like the

tions of the

moving

tortoise,

willingly as they

may

intellects,

attend to the

cause a certain species of power

un-

first

or

it

second summons, must ultimately yield the empire of the brain to the calls of hunger, or sink with the exhausted It

seems

tainty that to

as if

if

body

I

respect widely

in sleep.

one might say with

win's.

its

cer-

that one

immortality of the body.

On

tions,

to infer the

all.

mind

A

I

I

see be-

is

founded upon indications

is

aris-

and the other has no foundation at expect that great discoveries are yet

science,

particularly

branches of human physics; but the

in

moment we

leave past experience as the foundation of our conjectures concerning the future; and, still more, if our conjec-

would probably exhaust and destroy the strength of the body.

from Mr. God-

distinction that

to take place in all the

the contrary,

the greatest conceivable energy of

different

ing from the train of our present observa-

being accompanied by the im-

mind by no means seems

The only

assertions of the Prophet Mr. Brothers

a medicine could be found

mortality of the mind. But the immortality of the

beyond

tween a philosophical conjecture and the

immortalize the body there would be no

fear of

is

our present observation, that is beyond the limits of the human mind." own my ideas of philosophy are in this

temperate vigor of

mind appears to be favorable to health, but very great intellectual exertions tend

tures absolutely contradict past experience,

we

been often observed, to wear out the scabbard. Most of the instances which Mr. Godwin has brought to prove the power of the mind over the body, and

rather, as has

upon a wide field of unand any one supposition is then as good as another. If a person were to me that men would ultimately have

are thrown

certainty, just tell

519

Great Books Library eyes and hands behind them as well as be-

scopes would probably think that, as long

fore them, I should admit the usefulness

as the size of the specula

of the addition, but should give as a reason

of the tubes could

my

disbehef of it that I saw no indicawhatever in the past from which I could infer the smallest probability of such a change. If this be not allowed a valid for

ers and advantages of the instrument would increase; but experience has since

tions

taught us that the smallness of the

field,

the deficiency of hght, and the circum-

all

stance of the atmosphere being magnified

appears to

prevent the beneficial results that were to

that in the train of our present observa-

be expected from telescopes of extraordinary size and power. In many parts of knowledge, man has been almost constantly making some progress; in other parts, his efforts have been invariably baffled. The savage would not probably be able to guess at the causes of this mighty differ-

objection,

conjectures are alike,

all

equally philosophical.

me

and

and the length be increased, the pow-

I

own

it

no more genuine indications that man will become immortal upon earth than that he will have four eyes and four tions there are

hands, or that trees will grow horizontally instead

of perpendicularly.

be

It will

said,

perhaps, that

many

dis-

coveries have already taken place in the

ence.

Our

world that were

some

httle insight into these causes,

expected. This

unforeseen and un-

totally

I

grant to be true; but

if

further experience has given us

what we are of what we

person had predicted these discoveries without being guided by any analogies or

if

he would deserve the name of seer or prophet, but not of philosopher. The wonder that some of our modern discoveries would excite in the savage inhabitants of Europe in the times of Theseus and Achilles proves but little. Persons almost entirely unacquainted with the powers of a machine cannot be ex-

which, though negative,

though not

to

much

savages to say what grasp. as

A

watch would

much

or

is

persede

is

strike a

instances,

we

There

savage with

are

now

the

various

marked

characters

to the energies of their minds, their

of

relative

benev-

olent pursuits, etc., to enable us to judge

whether the operations of intellect have any decided effect in prolonging the duration of human life. It is certain that no decided effect of this kind has yet been observed. Though no attention of any kind has ever produced such an effect

able

which prevent an improvement in those invenwhich seemed to promise fairly for

The

certainly a sufficiently in

which we have some knowledge,

unlimited tions,

is

difference

to perceive the causes

it at first.

able to pass two or three nights without

necessity of this species of rest.

its

surprise as a perpetual motion;

many

A

mind

body, and this diminution of health and strength will soon disturb the operations of his understanding, so that by these great efforts he appears to have made no real progress whatever in superseding the

is to us a most familiar piece of mechanism, and the other has constantly eluded the efforts of the most acute intel-

In

infirmity."

great excitements on his

his

yet one

lects.

a very useful

sleep proportionably exhausts the vigor of

was known

not within

"conspicuous

this

man who by

better able than is

is

As the necessity of sleep seems rather depend upon the body than the mind, it does not appear how the improvement of the mind can tend very greatly to su-

be called competent judges,

are certainly

are not to expect,

to

four thousand years ago; and, therefore,

we

to expect in future,

piece of information.

pected to guess at its effects, I am far from saying that we are at present by any means fully acquainted with the powers of the human mind; but we certainly know of this instrument than

not, of

at least,

indications from past facts,

more

and

has therefore enabled us better to judge,

a

original improvers of tele-

520

Malthus: Essay on Population as could be construed into the smallest semblance of an approach towards im-

mortality,

yet

attention

more

to

the

of

body seems

the

a

the earth will

to

The man who

have

takes his

temperate meals and his bodily exercise

with scrupulous regularity will generally be found more healthy than the man who, very deeply engaged in intellectual pursuits,

agined with truth, in the heart

The

whose

citizen

who

has retired, and

beyond his Uttle the morning about

dling

all

box,

will,

perhaps,

live

as

many women

as

men who

in these

and

Godwin

human

life,

indefi-

as a very

Both these gentlemen

immortality.

after

have rejected the

the

light of revelation

absolutely promises eternal

They have

state.

lects in all ages

life in

to the ablest intel-

has indicated the future

existence of the soul. Yet so congenial

the idea of immortality to the

mind

of

it

out of their systems. After skepticisms

tidious

probable

are

mode

all

concerning

their fas-

duce a species of immortality of

law of philosophical probability but

have existed during some thousand years, no decided difference has been observed in the duration of human life from the operation of intellect; the mortality of man on earth seems to be as completely established, and exactly upon the same grounds, as any one, the most constant of the laws of nature. An immedi-

self in

and

in

it-

the highest degree, narrow, partial,

unjust.

great,

They suppose

virtuous,

that

all

the

and exalted minds that

have ever existed or that may exist for some thousands, perhaps millions, of years will be sunk in annihilation, and that only a few beings, not greater in number than can exist at once upon the earth, will be ultimately crowned with immortality. Had such a tenet been advanced as a tenet of

in the Creator of the Uniall

own,

their

not only completely contradictory to every

sity of characters that

power

only

the

of immortality, they intro-

take a larger range, as in the great diver-

ate act of

is

man

that they cannot consent entirely to throw

similar instances, or to

verse might, indeed, change one or

which

another

also rejected the light of

which

natural religion,

excited to vigorous mental exertion.

As

without taking

curious instance of the longing of the soul

long as the

most extensive, and whose views are the clearest of any of his contemporaries. It has been positively observed by those who have attended to the bills of mortality that women live longer upon an average than men, and, though I would not by any means say that their intellectual faculties are inferior, yet, I think, it must be allowed that, from their different education, there are not so

this subject

nite prolongation of

his borders of

is

of that interest

and Mr. Condorcet concerning the

above garden, pud-

philosopher whose range of intellect

it fails

notice of these conjectures of Mr.

ideas, perhaps, scarcely soar

or extend

a certain period to

which nature and probability

can alone give. I cannot quit

often forgets for a time these bodily

cravings.

fly off at

some more genial and warmer sun. The conclusion of this chapter presents us, undoubtedly, with a very beautiful and desirable picture, but, Hke some of those landscapes drawn from fancy and not im-

certain

respect than an atten-

eflFect in this

tion to the mind.

two,

will ultimately rise instead of fall, or that

of

I am very sure that all the enemies of religion, and probably Mr. Godwin and Mr. Condorcet among the rest, would have exhausted the whole force of their ridicule upon it as the most puerile, the most absurd, the poorest, the most piti-

these laws, either suddenly or gradually;

revelation,

but without some indications of such a change, and such indications do not exist, it is just as unphilosophical to suppose that the life of man may be prolonged beyond any assignable limits as to suppose that the

be and that stones

most

and,

attraction of the earth will gradually

ful,

changed

consequently, the most unworthy of the

into

repulsion,

521

the

iniquitoiisly

unjust,

Great Books Library Deity that the superstitious

folly of

man

however trifling these litmight appear to him, that they possessed such curious powers of selection, combination, arrangement, and almost of creation that upon being put into the ground they would choose, among all the dirt and moisture that surrounded them, those parts which best suited their purpose, that they would collect and ar-

to tell him, that

What

a strange and curious proof do

these conjectures exhibit of the inconsistency of skepticism! For it should be ob-

served that there sential difference

is a very striking and between believing an

esas-

which absolutely contradicts the most uniform experience and an assertion which contradicts nothing, but is merely beyond the power of our present observation and knowledge. 1 So diversified are the natural objects around us, so many instances of mighty power daily offer themselves to our view that we may fairly presume that there are many forms and operations of nature which we have not yet sertion

fined inlets of knowledge.

The

respect analogous to the ter

and stronger

of the latter assertion

weight of ceive,

what I said before, when I observed it was unphilosophical to expect any specific event that was not indicated by some kind of analogy in the past. In ranging beyond the bourne from which no traveler returns, we must necessarily quit

dict

we

consistently with true I

up

it

a hap-

is

regard to our not in favor

that the

first

this

great

mir-

the last

the

full

prodigious difference, but

latitude.

For instance,

man

2 The powers of selection, combination, and transmutation, which every seed shows, are truly miraculous. Who can imagine that these wonderful faculties are contained in these little bits of matter? To me it appears much more philosophical to suppose that

regard to events that

has, however, as

raise

has discovered many of the laws of nature: analogy seems to indicate that he will discover many more; but no analogy seems to indicate that he will discover a sixth sense, or a new species of power in the human mind, entirely beyond the train of our present observations.

that

earth,

creatures,

we have repeatedly seen, and miracle we have not seen. I admit acle-

extend our view beyond this life, evident that we can have no other guides than authority, or conjecture, and perhaps, indeed, an obscure and undefined feeling. What I say here, therefore, does not appear to me in any respect to contra-

happen on

human

The only difference, with own apprehensions, that is

is

but with expected to can seldom quit it philosophy. Analogy

corruption of

or at least invisible, form to give

to

When we

rule;

before he believed

assertions

pier existence in another state.

have witnessed the process of vegetation or growth; and were another being to show him two little pieces of matter, a grain of wheat and an acorn, to desire him to examine them, to analyze them if he pleased, and endeavor to find out their properties and essences; and then

this

proofs,

these strange

the essence of thought in an incorporeal,

versant only with inanimate or full-grown

may be

of mat-

little bits

placed in the earth.

than if he had been told that a being of mighty power, who had been the cause of all that he saw around him and of that existence of which he himself was conscious, would, by a great act of power upon the death and

resurrection

body from a natural body itself a more wonderful instance of power than the germination of a blade of wheat from the grain, or of an oak from an acorn. Could we conceive an intelligent being so placed as to be con-

it

first

very little doubt that the imaginary being which I have supposed would hesitate more, would require better authority

does not appear in

1

which were

I feel

of a spiritual

and never

of matter

range these parts with wonderful taste, judgment, and execution, and would rise up into beautiful forms, scarcely in any

observed, or which, perhaps, we are not capable of observing with our present con-

objects,

bits

tle

could invent.

con-

522

Malthus: Essay an Population surely no

man can

hesitate a

moment

the resurrection of

question,

a

we have

clude that

in

supposing that the

saying that, putting Revelation out of the

of

man may be inmay

prolonged than that trees

definitely

spiritual

rather less reason for

life

body from a natural body, which may be

be made

merely one among the many operations of nature which we cannot see, is an event indefinitely more probable than the immortahty of man on earth, which is not

tatoes indefinitelv laro-e.^

only an event, of which no symptoms or

the chapter which have been examInining, Mr. Godwin professes to consid-

from the principle of population. It has appeared, I think clearly, that he is great-

the observation of man.

ought perhaps again

I

to

my

to

make an

ly

apol-

why

philosophy as

should

it

I

own

I

think

to immortality

A

ever improbable on the

conjecture,

first

view of

ad-

vanced by able and ingenious men seems at least to deserve investigation. For my own part I feel no disinclination whatever to give that

of

the smallest

the mighty

ficient

ar-

weight of

it is

remain undoubtedly of suf-

fairlv said to

itself

completely to over-

however, make one or two obon a few of the prominent parts of Mr. Godwin's reasonings, which will

ity. I will,

servations,

contribute to place in a

still

clearer point

furnace in wrong shapes. These be broken and thrown aside as useless; while those vessels whose forms are full of truth, grace, and loveliness will be \\afted this great

of nature is present in these operations. To this Being, it would be equally

will

all

po\\erful easy to raise an oak without an acorn as with one. The preparatory process of putting seeds into the ground is merely ordained for the use of man, as one among the various other excitements necessary to awaken matter into mind. It is an idea that will be found, consistent equally with the natural phenomena around us, with the various events of human life, and with the successive Revelations of God to man, to suppose that the world is a mighty process for the creation and formation of mind. Many vessels will necessarily come out of all

The only

turn Mr. Godwin's whole system of equal-

God

energy in

certainly not of

of proof, the force of

may be

unimpaired; and

man on

earth which the appearances that can be brought in support of it deserve. Before we decide upon the utter improbabihty of such an event, it is but fair impartially to examine these appearances; and from such an examination I think we may con-

full

shadow

the objection

degree of credit to the opinion

the probable immortality of

is

gument, therefore, in the chapter which has any tendency to remove the objection is the conjecture concerning the extinction of the passion between the sexes; but as this is a mere conjecture, unsupported by

howit,

on earth

a kind to soften the difiiculty.

it is,

not be shown to be so in a

candid examination?

and that instead of

difiicult)%

myriads of centuries it is really not thirty years or even thirts' davs distant from us. The supposition of the approach of man

a conjecture

spirit of

erroneous in his statement of the dis-

tance of this

readers for dwelling so long

which many, I know, will think too absurd and improbable to require the least discussion. But if it be as improbable and as contrary to the genuine

upon

XIII

er the objection to his system of equality

constant of the laws of nature that has

ogy

indefinitely high, or po-

I

have yet appeared, but is a positive contradiction to one of the most

come within

grow

CHAPTER

indications

ever

to

into happier situations, nearer the presence of the

mighty maker.

Godwin advances the idea of the indefinite prolongation of human life, merely as a conjecture, yet as he has produced some appearances, which in his conception favor the supposition, he must certainly intend that these appearances should be examined; and this is all that I have

3 Though Mr.

meant

523

to do.

Great Books Library of

view the

hope that we can reason-

little

I

ably entertain of those vast improvements in the nature of

man and

he holds up

our admiring gaze in his

to

which

of society

am

willing to allow that every volun-

tary act

is

political justice.

upon the

Mr. Godwin considers man too much in the light of a being merely intellectual. This error, at least such I conceive it to be, pervades his whole work and mixes itself

diction to

with

all his

reasonings.

men may

tions of

The voluntary

The

these decisions.

man may be made

not act

question,

therefore,

to

understand a distinct

convinced by an unargument. A truth may be

proposition or be

dif-

answerable brought home to his conviction as a rational being, though he may determine to

and corporal propensities from what they would be in beings wholly intellectual. Mr. Godwin, in proving that sound reasoning and truth are capable of being adequately communifirst

man do

does not merely depend upon whether a

ac-

of a rational faculty

cated, examines the proposition

and a palpable contra-

experience, to say that the

all

very powerfully, as disturbing forces, in

compounded

ferently modified in creatures

subject,

corporal propensities of

originate in their opin-

but these opinions will be very

ions,

preceded by a decision of the

mind, but it is strangely opposite to what I should conceive to be the just theory

act contrary to

The

it

as a

compound

the desire of possessing a beautiful

men

will urge

prac-

being.

cravings of hunger, the love of liquor,

woman

to actions of the fatal con-

tically, and then adds, "Such is the appearance which this proposition assumes,

ests of society,

when examined

and practical

vinced, even at the very time they com-

not

mit them. Remove their bodily cravings,

admit of debate. Man is a rational be." So far from calling this a strict ing,

determining against such actions. Ask them

view. In

.

in a loose

consideration

strict

will

it

sequences of which, to the general

and they would not

.

own

consideration

of

should

the loosest and most erro-

neous

call

way

it

the

subject,

I

possible of considering

it.

their opinion of the

I

inter-

they are perfectly well con-

hesitate a

moment

same conduct

in

in an-

other person, and they would immediately

reprobate

It is

it.

But

in their

own

case,

and

the calculating the velocity of a falling

under

body in vacuo, and persisting in it that it would be the same through whatever resisting mediums it might fall. This was not

tion with these bodily cravings, the deci-

Newton's mode of philosophizing.

few general propositions are cation to a particular subject.

compound being is difi^erent from the conviction of the rational being. If this be the just view of the subject, and both theory and experience unite to prove that it is, almost all Mr. Godwin's reasonings on the subject of coercion in his seventh chapter will appear to be founded on error. He spends some time in placing in a ridiculous point of view the attempt to convince a man's understandsion of the

Very

just in appli-

The moon

is

not kept in her orbit round the earth, nor the earth in her orbit round the sun,

by a

force that varies merely in the inverse ration of the squares of the distances.

make

To

the general theory just in application

to the revolutions of these bodies,

it

the circumstances of their situa-

all

up a doubtful proposition mind by blows. Undoubtedly it is

ing and to clear

was

necessary to calculate accurately the dis-

in his

turbing force of the sun upon the moon,

both ridiculous and barbarous, and so is cock-fighting, but one has little more to do with the real object of human punishments

and

of the

moon upon

the earth; and

till

these disturbing forces were properly estimated,

mowould have proved

actual observations on the

tions of these bodies

that the theory

was not accurately

true.

the

too frequent)

is

524

One frequent (indeed mode of punishment Mr. Godwin will hardly think this

than

much

death.

other.

Malthus: Essay on Population should be tempted to use

intended for conviction, at least

it does not appear how the individual or the society could reap much future benefit from an understanding enlightened in this manner.

The

principal

punishments have

in the gratifi-

where murby flying to a sanctuary, are allowed more frequently to escape, the crime has never been held in the same detestation and has consequently been more frederers,

which human view are undoubtedly

objects in

it

cation of his revenge. In Italy

No man who

restraint and example: restraint, or removal of an individual member whose vicious habits are likely to be prejudicial to the society, and example, which by expressing the sense of the community with regard to a particular crime and, by associating more nearly and visibly crime and

would have been comparatively but known.

punishment, holds out a moral motive to dissuade others from the commission of it.

portion the punishment accurately to the

Mr. Godwin thinks,

Restraint,

quent.

has

solitary

Italy

use of the

aware of

passion

stiletto in transports of

little

That human laws either do or can pro-

may be

no person

offense, assert.

imprisonment, which

been the most

certainly

all

moment, that if every murder in had been invariably punished the

a

for

permitted as a temporary expedient, though

he reprobates

at

is

the operation of moral motives can doubt,

From

the thing

and, indeed, almost the only attempt to-

folly to

absolutely impossible, but this

is

imperfection, though

successful,

have the

will

the inscrutabilit}' of motives

species of injustice,

human

may be called a no valid argument

it

is

man

wards the moral amelioration of offenders.

against

He

that he will frequently have to choose be-

talks

fostered

of the selfish passions that are

by

solitude,

and

tween two

of the virtues

generated in society. But surely these

Were

it

and virtuous men he would probably be more improved than in solitude. But is this practicable? Mr. Godwin's ingenuity is more frequently employed in

of

terrible,

mented

common

A

continual en-

But nothing

human

difficult as to

improvements. that

more men

The frequency who,

is

so easy

institutions;

suggest adequate It

is

to

of talents

be laemploy

former occupation than

ter,

as the

of

crime

common

saying

sufficiently

among men, know bet-

is,

proves that some

may be brought home

truths

to the conviction of

punishment, has powerfully

the mind without always producing the proper effect upon the conduct. There are

sentiment

other truths of a nature that perhaps never

frequent in the mouths of the

can be adequately communicated from one man to another. The superiority of the pleasures of intellect to those of sense Mr. Godwin considers as a fundamental truth. Taking all circumstances into considera-

its

to

generate

that

people, that a murder will sooner

come

and the habitual in consequence held will make a man, in the agony of passion, throw down his knife for fear he or later

will admit.

their time in the

indefatigable pains taken in this

contributed is

that suggests itself of evils.

in the latter.

nations

country to find out a murder, and the cer-

which

them

nothing so

have indeed been led into the most barbarous cruelties, but the abuse of any practice is not a good argument against its

tainty of

mode

as to find fault with

Punishment, for example, is totally reprobated. By endeavoring to make exam-

The

the best

practical

and

a sufficient rea-

these institutions as perfect as the nature

remedies.

ples too impressive

it is

deavor should undoubtedly prevail to make

finding out evils than in suggesting prac-

use.

is

preventing greater

the offender confined to the

society of able

tical

and

evils;

the lot of

is

son for the adoption of any institution that

vir-

tues are not generated in the society of a prison.

laws. It

to light;

horror in which murder

is

tion,

525

I

should be disposed

to

agree with

Great Books Library him; but

how am

I

to

who

truth to a person

communicate

intellectual pleasure.

felt

I

may

and able expostulations might be

patient

this

has scarcely ever

incapable of effecting in forty years.

well

as

attempt to explain the nature and beauty of colors to a blind man. If I am ever so

and

laborious, patient,

clear,

CHAPTER XIV

and have the

most repeated opportunities of expostulation, any real progress toward the accomplishment of my purpose seems absolutely hopeless. There is no common measure between us. I cannot proceed step by step:

If

the reasonings of the preceding chapter are just, the corollaries respecting

which Mr. Godwin draws from the proposition, that the voluntary political truth

actions of

a truth of a nature absolutely incapa-

men

originate in their opinions,

will not

appear

I

ness of

man

sient,

perfectible, or in other words, susceptible

it is

ble of demonstration. All that that the wisest

had agreed

and best men

can say

I

to be clearly established. These corollaries are, "Sound reasoning and truth, when adequately communicated, must always be victorious over error: Sound reasoning and truth are capable of being so communicated: Truth is omnipotent: The vices and moral weak-

is

in all ages

in giving the preference, very

greatly, to the pleasures of the intellect;

and that

my own

experience completely

confirmed the truth of their decisions; that

had found sensual pleasures vain, tranand continually attended with tedium and disgust; but that intellectual pleasures appeared to me ever fresh and young, filled up all my hours satisfactorily, gave a new zest to life, and diffused a lastme,

it

ation for

my

The

it is

credulity,

fect

I

feel

to sleep over

it;

I

ly

an, I feel alive

joy

my

and

in spirits

and

upon the conduct, the major may be

falls to the ground. If by adequatecommunicated be meant merely the con-

viction of the rational faculty, the major

must be denied, the minor true

in

cases

will

be only

capable of demonstration,

and the consequent equally fourth proposition Mr.

falls.

Godwin

calls

The the

preceding proposition, with a slight variation in the statement. If so, it must accompany the preceding proposition in its fall. But it may be worthwhile to inquire, with reference to the principal argument of this essay, into the particular reasons which we have for supposing that the vices and

pass an

evening with a gay party, or a pretty

con-

by ade-

sequent, or the omnipotence of truth, of

very differently

but when

If

course

upon the subject. I have very frequently taken up a book, and almost as frequently gone

may be

allowed and the minor denied. The con-

and

produce real conviction. The affair is not an affair of reasoning, but of experience. He would probably observe in reply what you say may be very true with regard to yourself and many other good men, but part

three propositions

conviction as to produce an adequate ef-

I have not said anything, nor can anything be said of a nature to

my own

is

quately commimicated be meant such a

not conviction.

for

first

sidered a complete syllogism.

my

authority:

Man

of perpetual improvement."

mind. If he believe can only be from respect and vener-

ing serenity over

are not invincible:

wom-

truly en-

existence.

Under such circumstances reasoning and arguments are not instruments from which success can be expected. At some future

moral weakness of man can never be wholly overcome in this world. Man, according to Mr. Godwin, is a creature formed what he is by the successive impressions which he has received, from the first moment that the germ from

time, perhaps, real satiety of sensual pleas-

some accidental impressions that awakened the energies of his mind, might effect that in a month which the most

ures, or

526

on Population

Molthiis: Essay

which he sprung was animated. Could he be placed in a situation where he was subject to no e\'il impressions \\'hatever, though it might be doubted whether in such a situation virtue could

I

justice,

I

if

understand

rightly,

it

weaknesses of

men proceed from

and

the in-

and social institutions, and that if these were removed and the understandings of men more enbghtened, there would be little or no temptation in the world to evil. .\s it has been justice of their pohtical

proved, however,

clearly

think) that this

and

(at

least

as

other such virtuous

independent of anv pohtical or social institutions whatever, the greater part of mankind, from the fixed

tion,

in-

rather increased the probabilit\" that an-

I

entireh" a false concep-

is

saN'

one respect

the same, and that, therefore, I could have no good reason for supposing that a greater number of sLxes would come up in the next hundred times of throwing than in the preceding same number of throws. But, that man had in some sort a power of influencing those causes that formed character, and that everv" good and virtuous man that was produced, bv the influence which he must necessarilv have,

to

is

that the greater part of the vices

Godwin might in

is

preceding causes, or rather the chances respecting the preceding causes, were alwavs

would certainlv be banished. The great bent of Mr. Godwin's work on pohtical

show

that Mr.

accurate, that in the case of the dice, the

vice

exist,

am aware

that the comparison

character would be

generated, whereas the coming up of sixes

that,

upon the dice once would

certainly not in-

crease the probabilits- of their coming;

up

a

and unalterable laws of nature, must ever be subject to the evil temptations arising from want, besides other passions; it fol-

second time. I admit this objection to the accuracy of the comparison, but it is onlv

lows from Mr. Godwin's definition of man that such impressions, and combinations of

assured us that the influence of the most

impressions, cannot be afloat in the world

yev\- strong

partially

formation of character,

it

temptations to doubtedh" affect some, but

a

all

that sixes will

men

these

be virtuous as come up a hundred times will

following upon the dice. of combinations

upon

The

much

in

man might be so mode

a

re-

regard to the

peated succession of throws appears to

me

that he

must necessarilv

his

first

it\-

in

existence.

.\nd

this

evil

could hv the

far

enhghtened with elbow throw sixes even'

of shaking his to

of

motions of the arm, remain

and vice

relative proportions of virtue

the future periods of the world;

become general rules; that extraordinary and vmusual combinations will be frequent;

weakness of mankind, taken

or that the individual instances of great

are invincible.

all

number

man; though it would be the height of folly and presumption to attempt to calculate the

comparison

in

would give

absolutely independent of the will of

some measure, show the absurd-

which have appeared

I

or at least allow that

would be able

like the nice

of supposing that exceptions will ever

virtue

un-

with

those impressions which form character,

exist in

the world, supposing ever\- indi\-idual to be formed what he is by that combination of impressions which he has received since

will,

will fail

time. But as long as a great

not inaptly to represent the great varietv' of character that

to

man be removed,

up the comparison; a

it

attempt to prove that

temptations

exertions of

great varietv

the dice in

his

evil. It will

Had Mr. Godwin

greater number.

succeeded

is

surely as improbable that under such cir-

cumstances

Repeated ex-perience has

\-irtuous character will rarel\- prevail against

without generating a variet\- of bad men. According to Mr. Godwin's on\ti conception of the

valid.

safelv asserted that the vices

The

ages

of the world will ever prevail imiversalK-.

fifth

proposition

is

it

at

mav be

and moral

in the mass,

the general de-

duction from the four former and will con-

527

Great Books Library as the foundations which have given way. In the sense in which Mr. Godwin understands the term perfectible, the perfectibility of man cannot be asserted, unless the preceding propositions could have been clearly established. There is, however, one sense, which the term will bear, in which it is, perhaps, just. It may be said with truth that man is always susceptible of improvement, or that there never has been, or will be, a period of his history in which he can be said to have reached his possible acme of perfection. Yet it does not by any means follow from this that our efiForts to improve man will always succeed, or even, that he will ever make, in the greatest number of ages, any extraordinary strides towards perfection. The only inference that can be drawn is that the precise limit of his improvement cannot possibly be known. And I cannot help again reminding the reader of a distinction which, it appears to me, ought particularly to be attended to in the present question: I mean, the essential difference there is between an unlimited improvement and an improvement the limit of which cannot be ascertained. The former is an improvement not applicable to man under the present laws of his nature. The latter, undoubtedly, is apph-

sequently

support

gree of beauty in the flower which he at

fall,

present possesses, yet he cannot be sure

it

The

By endeavoring to imone quality, he may impair the beauty of another. The richer mold which he would employ to increase the size of his plant would probably burst the calyx, and destroy at once its symmetry. In a similar manner, the forcing manure used to bring about the French Revolution, and to give a greater freedom and energy to the himian mind, has burst the calyx of humanity, the restiaining bond of all sobeautiful blossom.

prove

however large the separate pethave grown, however strongly or even beautifully a few of them have been marked, the whole is at present a loose, deformed, disjointed mass, without union, symmetry, or harmony of coloring.

ciety; and, als

Were

it of consequence to improve and carnations, though we could have no hope of raising them as large as cabbages, we might undoubtedly expect, by successive efforts, to obtain more beau-

pinks

by the

I

No

proving the happiness of the

perfectibility of a plant.

would

object

conceive,

symmetry, and beauty of

to unite size, or. It

The

florist is, as I

col-

surely be presumptuous in the

most successful improver to affirm that he possessed a carnation in which these qualities

er

may

However

soil,

spe-

least

may be endured, before the wound grows up again. As the five propositions which I have

beautiful his flow-

be, other care, other

Every the

misery

existed in the greatest possible state

of perfection.

human

advance in this respect is highly valuable. But an experiment with the hviman race is not like an experiment upon inanimate objects. The bursting of a flower may be a trifle. Another will soon succeed it. But the bursting of the bonds of society is such a separation of parts as cannot take place without giving the most acute pain to thousands; and a long time may elapse, and much cies.

man may be have mentioned before,

of the enterprising

specimens than we at present possess. person can deny the importance of im-

tiful

real perfectibility of as

similar means, rather in-

creased in stiength, he will obtain a more

cable.

illustrated,

by pursuing

that

been examining may be considered as the cornerstones of Mr. Godwin's fanciful

or other

might produce one still more beautiful. Yet, although he may be aware of the absurdity of supposing that he has reached perfection; and though he may know by what means he attained that desuns,

structure

and, indeed, as expressing the

aim and bent of excellent

may 528

be,

much

his

whole work, however

of his detached reasoning

he must be considered as having

Malthas: Essay on Population failed

CHAPTER XV

great object of his under-

the

in

from the compound natixre of man, which he has by no means sufficiently smoothed, taking. Besides the difficulties arising

argument against the perfectibility of man and society remains whole and unimpaired from anything that he has advanced. And as far as I can trust my own judgment, this argument the principal

appears to be conclusive, not only against the perfectibility of man, in the enlarged sense in which Mr.

Godwin the Mr.Enquirer drops a in

which seem

to

his

opinions since he wrote the Political Justice;

and

years

as this

standing,

a

is

I

work now

of

some

should certainly think

I had been arguing against opinions which the author had himself seen reason to alter, but that in some of the essays of

that

the Enquirer Mr. Godwin's peculiar

Godwin understands marked

mode

of thinking appears in as striking a light

term, but against any very

the

to hint at

preface

few expressions some change in his

as ever.

striking change for the better in the form and structure of general society, by which I mean, any great and decided amelioration of the condition of the lower classes of mankind, the most numerous, and, consequently, in a general view of the subject, the most important part of the human race. Were I to live a thousand years, and the laws of nature to remain

It has been frequently observed that though we cannot hope to reach perfection in anything, yet that it must always be advantageous to us to place before our eyes the most perfect models. This observation has a plausible appearance, but is very far from being generally true. I even doubt its truth in one of the most

or rather

obvious exemplifications that would occur.

hope, a contradiction from experience

I doubt whether a very young painter would receive so much benefit from an attempt to copy a highly finished and perfect picture as from copying one where the outlines were more strongly marked and the manner of laying on the colors was more easily discoverable. But in cases where the perfection of the model is a perfection of a difi^erent and superior nature from that toward which we should

and

the same, little

should

I

in asserting that

little

fear,

no possible

sacrifices or

which any of the com-

exertions of the rich, in a country

had been long inhabited, could time place the lower classes

munity

for

a situation equal, with regard

in

circumstances, to the situation of the

to

common

people about thirty years

in the northern states of

ago

America.

The lower classes of people in Europe at some future period be much better

we

may

naturally

instructed than they are at present; they

making any progress towards it, but we shall in all probability impede the progress which we might have expected to make had we not fixed our eyes upon

may be

taught to employ the

fittle

spare

many better ways than they may live under better

time they have in at the alehouse;

so perfect a model.

and more equal laws than they have ever hitherto done, perhaps, in any country; and I even conceive it possible, though not probable, that they may have more leisure;

but

it is

that they can of all

money to

not in the nature of things

them

early, in the full confidence

that they shall

be able

to

shall

not

always

A

highly intellectual

exempt from the infirm calls of hunger or sleep, is undoubtedly a much more perfect existence than man; but were man to attempt to copy such a model, he would not only fail in making any advances towards it but by unwisely straining to imitate what was inimitable he would probably destroy the little intellect which he was endeavoring to improve. being,

be awarded such a quantity

or subsistence as will allow

marry

advance,

fail in

provide with

ease for a numerous family.

529

Great Books Library way.

He

The form and structure of society which Mr. Godwin describes is as essentially distinct from any forms of society which have hitherto prevailed in the world

ploy

as a

being that can live without food or is from a man. By improving society in its present form, we are making no more advances towards such a state of things as he pictures than we should make approaches towards a line with regard to

when

sleep

besides of a

which we

The

ference that Mr. Godwin's decision in his

whether, by looking

essay appears at once as evidently false

were

walking

question, therefore, to

is

parallel.

such a form of society as our polar

we

Godwin appears this

to

me

to

as Dr.

star,

true.

Mr.

species? Mr. have decided

siders

the

I

as

from the frugal

The frugal man make more money saves from and adds to his capital, and

that

locking up

is

a dif-

evidently

some present incon-

the

think

from

funds destined for

star. it

has been proved in the former

absolutely impracticable.

is

polar star in the

What

great seas of political

discovery? Reason would teach us to ex-

pect no other, than winds perpetually adverse, constant but fruitless

con-

toil,

shipwreck, and certain misery.

an

not only

fail

in

frequent

We

making the smallest

shall

real

his

income

approach towards such a perfect form of society; but by wasting our strength of mind and body, in a direction in which it is impossible to proceed, and by the frequent distress which we must necessarily occasion by our repeated failures, we shall evidently impede that degree of improvement in society which is really

this

capital

attainable.

totally a distinct character, at least with regard to his effect upon the prosperity

Smith.

Smith's position

Godwin

society

is

of the state,

essential

consequences then are we to expect from looking to such a point as our guide and

acknowledged truth, and therefore makes his comparison between the avaricious man and the man who spends his income. But the avaricious man of Mr. Godwin

Adam

so

parts of this essay that such a state of

observa-

mischief of profusion

is

could not, indeed, but occur to

our polar

be more evidently just. The subject of Mr. Godwin's essay is a little similar in its first appearance, but in

He

up

motion

The only way, he had of weakening this objection was to compare the two characters chiefly with regard to their tendency to accelerate the approach of that happy state of cultivated equality, on which he says we ought always to fix our eyes as

tion can

as distinct as possible.

locks

sets in

therefore,

by parsimony and poor by proand that, therefore, every frugal man was a friend and every spendthrift an enemy to his country. The reason he gives is that what is saved from revenue is always added to stock, and is therefore taken from the maintenance of labor that is generally unproductive and employed in the maintenance of labor that realizes

is

Godwin

the maintenance of labor.

rich

essence

Adam

It

thus

fusion,

No

of Mr.

is

kind. But the

venience might arise to the poor,

served that nations as well as individuals

valuable commodities.

man

wealth in a chest and

unproductive. This

on avarice and profusion in the Enquirer. Dr. Adam Smith has very justly ob-

itself in

more valuable

no labor of any kind, either productive or

question against himself in his essay

grow

benefits the state

spent as income, but the labor

avaricious his

are likely to advance or retard the im-

provement of the human

in this

it

because he adds to its general capital, and because wealth employed as capital not only sets in motion more labor, than

man

of Dr.

in order to

he either employs himself in the maintenance of productive labor, or he lends it to

tuted according to Mr. Godwin's system

some other person who

must,

will

It

probably em-

530

has appeared that a society consti-

from the inevitable laws of our

Malthus: Essay on Population nature, degenerate into a class of propri-

and a

etors

of laborers,

class

the substitution of benevolence for

moving

love as the

is

and that

in

self-

exchange

for

necessaries

the

of

life.

would hardly appear then that you benefit him by narrowing the market for this commodity, by decreasing the demand for labor, and lessening the value of the

principle of society,

It

producing the happy eflFects that might be expected from so fair a name, would cause the same pressure of want to be felt by the whole of society instead

by the exertion of his bodily strength. is the only commodity he has to give

This

of

only property that he possesses.

It is to

Mr. Godwin would perhaps say that

the established administration of property

the whole system of barter and exchange

which

and

now

is

to the

felt

only by a part.

apparently narrow principle of we are indebted for all the

is

noblest exertions of

human

genius,

finer and more delicate emotions of the soul,

for

indeed,

everything,

that

exacting

dis-

and no

sufficient

change has

as yet

taken place in the nature of civilized

poor

a

money without

return

for

it.

In

answer to the first method proposed, it may be observed that even if the rich could be persuaded to assist the poor in this way the value of the assistance would be comparatively triffing. The rich, though they

tinguishes the civilized from the savage state;

severe

so

you would man, you labor upon your-

traffic. If

the

relieve

should take a part of his self, or give him your

the

all

a vile and iniquitous

essentially

self-love that

man

he either is or ever will be in a state when he may safely throw down the ladder by which he has to enable us to say that

think themselves of great importance, bear

but a small proportion

risen to this eminence.

in point of

num-

advanced

bers to the poor, and would, therefore,

beyond the savage state, a class of proprietors and a class of laborers^ must

relieve them but of a small part of their burdens by taking a share. Were all those

If

in every society that has

necessarily

labor

is

exist,

it

is

evident

that,

that are

as

added

the only property of the class of

diminish the possessions of this part of that a poor

of those

employed

in

the value of this property must tend to

The only way

in the labors of luxuries

number

producing necessaries, and could these necessary labors be amicably divided among all, each man's share might indeed be comparatively light; but desirable as such an amicable division would undoubtedly be, I cannot conceive any

laborers, everything that tends to diminish

society.

employed

to the

man

has of supporting himself in independence

which it been shown that the spirit of benevolence, guided by the strict impartial justice that Mr.

practical principle^ according to 1

could

It should be observed that the principal argument of this essay only goes to prove the necessity of a class of proprietors and a class of laborers, but by no means infers

take

place.

It

has

that the present great inequality of property is either necessary or useful to society. On

2 Mr. Godwin seems

as

to have but for practical principles; but I

restraint.

the present state of society, and the beauty of a different state, without pointing out a practical method that might be immediately applied of accelerating our advances from the one to the other.

it must certainly be considered an evil, and every institution that promotes it is essentially bad and impolitic. But whether a government could with advantage to society actively interfere to repress inequality of fortunes, may be a matter of doubt. Perhaps the generous system of perfect liberty, adopted by Dr. Adam Smith and the French economists, would be ill exchanged for any system of

the contrary,

little

respect

own it appears to me that he is a much greater benefactor to mankind who points out how an inferior good may be attained than he who merely expatiates on the deformity of

531

Great Books Library

Godwin

would,

describes,

if

Three or four hundred years ago there was undoubtedly much less labor in Eng-

vigorously

acted upon, depress in want and misery the whole human race. Let us examine

land in proportion to the population than

but there was much more dependence; and we probably should not now enjoy our present degree of civil at present,

what would be the consequence, if the proprietor were to retain a decent share for himself; but to give the rest away to without exacting a task from

the poor,

Not

liberty

in return.

would

there

produce of land,

of

diminishing

dependent upon their bounty. Even the greatest enemies of trade and manufactures, and I do not reckon myself a very determined friend to them, must allow that when they were introduced into Eng-

the

as well as the labors of

want than can be adequately supplied. The sur-

more

plus of the rich

will

always be

man might be

land liberty

in

but four will be desirous to obcannot make this selection of three out of the four without conferring a great favor on those that are the objects of his choice. These persons must consider themselves as under a great obligation to him and as dependent upon him for their it.

He

The

support.

to

debase

the

and every history of

man

ever read places in a

we have

mind

is

exposed which

is

inequahties of the

The proper

when

labor

of benevolence

is

to

it can never be substituted in its no man were to allow himself to act till he had completely determined that the action he was about to perform was more conducive than any other to the general good, the most enlightened minds would hesitate in perplexity and amazement; and the unenlightened would be continually committing the grossest mis-

love,

intrusted

but

place. If

In the present state of things, and par-

who

first.

oflfice

soften the partial evils arising from self-

with constant power. ticularly

to

and

acting as another general law, corrects the

strong point of view the danger to which that

and

parent;

same time some bountiful provision which,

human mind,

than dependence; that

its

is

in request, the

does a day's work for

me

man

confers

great an obligation upon me as I do upon him. I possess what he wants; he possesses what I want. We make an amicable exchange. The poor man walks erect in conscious independence; and the mind of his employer is not vitiated by full as

takes.

As Mr. Godwin,

down any

a sense of power.

532

_,

1

smooth the wrinkles of this seems to be the analogy of all nature. Perhaps there is no one general law of nature that will not appear, to us at least, to produce partial evil; and we frequently observe at the

perities,

and the dence, and the evil effects of these two impressions on the human heart are well known. Though I perfectly agree with Mr. Godwin, therefore, in the evil of hard labor, yet I still think it a less evil, and less calculated

in their train.

the partial deformities, to correct the as-

man would feel his poor man his depen-

rich

power

came

Nothing that has been said tends in the most remote degree to undervalue the principle of benevolence. It is one of the noblest and most godlike qualities of the human heart, generated perhaps slowly and gradually from self-love, and afterwards intended to act as a general law whose kind oflRce it should be to soften

sufficient

for three,

tain

of

give something in exchange for the pro-

has appeared that from the principle

of population

by the introduction

the poor,

visions of the great Lords, instead of being

another objection yet remains.

luxury, It

to

be,

if

manufactures, had not been enabled to

mention the idleness and the vice that such a proceeding, if general, would probably create in the present state of society, and the great risk

them

therefore, has not laid

practical principle according to

Malthus: Essay on Population

which the necessary labors of agriculture might be amicably shared among the whole class of laborers, by general invectives against employing the poor he appears to pursue an unattainable good through much present evil. For if every man who employs the poor ought to be considered as their enemy, and as adding to the weight of their oppressions, and if the miser is for this reason to be preferred to the

man who

spends his income,

up more land, in breeding more oxen, employing more tailors, and in building more houses. But supposing, for a moment, that the conduct of the miser did not tend to check any really useful

ing in

This I

their incomes might, to the advantage of society, be converted into misers. Suppose then that a hundred thousand persons who now employ ten men each were to lock up their wealth from general use, it is evident that a million of working men of difiFerent kinds would be completely thrown out of all employment. The extensive misery that

Mr.

follows that any

number

of

now spend

an

such

event

would produce

in

and

I

some

difficulty in

to "place in

human

their

the

up nothing, that the point has

corn,

the

of producing them,

which

equitably divided, labor,

and

an extent,

up up the power virtually the

as

if

he were

a beggar; but not to as great an extent as

if

he had employed

his

command

over his

own

his

invectives

they were attended

to,

against

would

produce much present evil without approximating us to that state of cultivated equality to which he looks forward as his polar star, and which, he seems to think, should at present be our guide in determining the nature and tendency of human actions. A mariner guided by such a polar star is in danger of ship-

his contemporaries, as truly,

to as great

if

certainly

same. These things are certainly used and

consumed by

are they to

the necessary labor in a society might be

really lock

is

How

Till Mr. Godwin, therefore, can point out some practical plan according to which

nor oxen, nor clothes, nor houses.

Undoubtedly he does not

human

labor.

it.

these articles, but he locks

to

seven hours in the

still

interfere with his

Having defined therefore wealth, very justly, to be the commodities raised and fostered by human labor, he observes that the miser locks up neither illustrate

six or

be prevented from making this exchange? It would be a violation of the first and most sacred property that a man possesses to attempt, by positive institutions, to

nature of wealth have not been applied to

really necessary,

among themselves never

quantity of subsistence.

incomes

of

is

the lower classes of society

would more in want than others. Those that had large families would naturally be desirous of exchanging two hours more of their labor for an ampler

not been rightly understood, and that the definition

if

necessarily be

beings in the condition

development and

that,

much more

is

the principle of population, some

to be placed." But Mr. Godwin says that the miser

true

there

be produced in as great abundance as at present. But it is almost impossible to conceive that such an agreement could be adhered to. From

which they ought

really locks

that

happiness might

proving that a con-

who spend

concede to

perfectly willing to

Godwin

day, the commodities essential to

duct of this kind tended more than the

conduct of those

are

the unconquerable diflBculty.

could agree

question whether he might not

and find

is

am

work more than

could hardly refuse to acknowledge,

self

who

those

all

of

labor in the world than

Godwin him-

present state of society, Mr.

are

employment to obtain thrown patents which they may show in order to be awarded a proper share of the food and raiment produced by the society? out

men who

it

how

produce,

wreck.

wealth in turn-

533

Great Books Library

CHAPTER XVI

no possible way in in general be emto a state, and beneficially so

Perhaps there

is

which wealth could ployed

particularly to the lower orders of

it,

professed object of TheSmith's inquiry the

as

is

The

increasing

demand

for

more

it,

mean an

I

which

causes

still

which he occasionally

interesting,

mixes with

inquiry into the

happiness

the

affect

of

nations or the happiness and comfort of

the lower orders of society, which

most numerous

am

in

class

is

the

every nation.

I

aware of the near connection of these two subjects, and that the causes which tend to increase the wealth of a state, tend also, generally

agri-

must always tend to better the condition of the poor; and if the accession of work be of this kind, so far is it from being true, that the poor would be obliged to work ten hours for the same price that they before worked eight, that the very reverse would be the fact; and a laborer might then support his wife and family as well by the labor of six hours, as he could before by the labor cultural labor

sufficiently

speaking, to increase the happiness of the

lower classes of the people. But perhaps

Adam

Smith has considered these two still more nearly connected than they really are; at least, he has not stopped to take notice of those instances where the wealth of a society may increase Dr.

inquiries

as

(according to his definition of wealth)

without having any tendency to increase

of eight.

The

another inquiry, however, perhaps

is

Had

Mr. Godwin exerted his energetic eloquence in painting the superior worth and usefulness of the character who employed the poor in this way, to him who employed them in narrow luxuries, every enhghtened man must have applauded his eflForts.

and

causes of the wealth of nations.* There

by improving and rendering productive that land which to a farmer would not answer the expense of cultivation.

Adam

Dr.

natiu-e

labor created

by

luxuries,

though

the comforts of the laboring part of

do not mean

it.

useful in distributing the produce of the

I

country, without vitiating the proprietor

discussion of

by power,

happiness of man, but shall merely con-

or

by indeed, the same

debasing the

laborer

dependence, has not, on the state of the poor.

to enter into a philosophical

what

constitutes the proper

accession of work from manuthough it may raise the price of labor even more than an increasing de-

two universally acknowledged inhealth, and the command of the necessaries and conveniences of life. Little or no doubt can exist that the comforts of the laboring poor depend upon

mand

the increase of the funds destined for the

sider

beneficial efi^ects

A

gredients,

great

factures,

for agricultural labor, yet, as in this

case, the quantity of food in the country

maintenance of

may

exactly in proportion to the rapidity of this

not be proportionably increasing, the

advantage to the poor will be but temporary,

as

increase.

the price of provisions must

increase

labor,

and

will

be very

The demand for labor which such would occasion, by creating a

necessarily rise in proportion to the price

competition in the market, must necessari-

of labor. Relative to this subject,

ly

I

can-

not avoid venturing a few remarks

on a part of Dr. Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations, speaking at the same time with that diffidence which I ought certainly to feel in differing from a per-

raise the value of labor,

additional

number

of

and,

hands

till

the

reqxiired

were reared, the increased funds would

An

son so jusdy celebrated in the political world.

Inquiry into the Nations and Causes of Nations; Great Books,

of the Wealth Vol. 39.-Ed.

534

Malthus: Essay on Population be distributed

the

to

same number

merely nominal, as the price of provisions must necessarily rise with it. The demand for manufacturing laborers might, indeed, entice many from agriculture and thus tend to diminish the annual produce of the land, but we will suppose any eflFect of this kind to be compensated by improvements

of

persons as before the increase, and therefore

every laborer would live compara-

But perhaps Dr.

tively at his ease.

Smith

errs in representing

Adam

every increase

of the revenue or stock of a society as

an

increase of these funds. Such surplus stock

be conby the individual possessing it as an additional fund from which he may maintain more labor; but it will not be a real and eflFectual fund for the main-

and the

or revenue will, indeed, always

in the instruments of agriculture,

sidered

quantity of provisions, therefore, to remain

increase has arisen merely from the pro-

Improvements in manufacturing machinery would, of course, take place, and this circumstance, added to the greater number of hands employed in manufactures, would cause the annual produce of the labor of the country to be upon the whole greatly increased. The wealth, therefore, of the country would be increasing annually, according to the definition, and might not, perhaps, be increasing very

duce of labor and not from the produce of

slowly.

number

tenance

of

laborers,

unless the whole, or at least a

an

additional

the same.

of

great part of this increase of the stock or

revenue of the society, be convertible into a proportional quantity of provisions; and it

will not

land.

A

be so convertible where the

The question

distinction will in this case occur

between the number of hands which the stock of the society could employ and the number which its territory can maintain. To explain myself by an instance. Dr. Adam Smith defines the wealth of a nation to consist in the annual produce of its land and labor. This definition evidently includes manufactured produce, as well as the produce of the land. Now supposing a nation, for a course of years, was to add what it saved from its yearly revenue to its manufacturing capital solely, and not to its capital employed upon land, it is evident that it might grow richer according to the above definition, without a power of

self-evident proposition that rise in

The

increase in the price of labor there-

fore,

which we have supposed, would have or no eflFect in giving the laboring

little

poor a greater command over the necessaries and conveniences of life. In this respect they would be nearly in the same

one other respect they worse state. A greater proportion of them would be employed in manufactures, and fewer, consequently, in agriculture. And this exchange of professions will be allowed, I think, by all, to be very unfavorable in respect of health, one state as before. In

would be

in a

essential ingredient of happiness, besides

the greater uncertainty of manufacturing

from the capricious taste of man, the accidents of war, and other

the yearly stock of

causes.

provisions in the country ing, this rise

the price of labor, the stock of pro-

of course raise the

stock in trade or of setting

if

a

be a nominal rise, as it must very shortly be followed by a proportional rise in provisions.

maintenance of labor. There would, notwithstanding, be a demand for labor from the power which each manufacturer would possess, or at least think he possessed, of extending his old

price of labor, but

It is

any general

visions remaining the same, can only

real funds for the

demand would

whether wealth, increas-

the condition of the laboring poor.

supporting a greater number of laborers, and, therefore, without an increase in the

This

is

ing in this way, has any tendency to better

up

labor, arising

fresh works.

was not

increas-

would soon turn out

to

It

be

may be

stance as

535

I

said, perhaps, that such an inhave supposed could not occur,

Great Books Library because the rise in the price of provisions would immediately turn some additional capital into the channel of agriculture. But this is an event which may take place very

wealth of the nation has had httle or no tendency to better the condition of the laboring poor. They have not, I believe, a

should be remarked, that a

conveniences of life, and a much greater proportion of them than at the period of

slowly, as

it

had preceded the and would, therefore, impede the good eflFects upon agriculture, which the increased value of the produce of the land might otherwise have occarise in the price of labor,

is employed in manufactures and crowded together in close and unwholesome rooms. Could we believe the statement of Dr. Price that the population of England has decreased since the revolution, it would

sioned.

might

It

also

be

said, that the additional

would enable it to import provisions suflBcient for the maintenance of those whom its stock could em-

even appear that the effectual funds for the maintenance of labor had been declining during the progress of wealth in other respects. For I conceive that it may be laid down as a general rule that if the effectual funds for the maintenance of labor are increasing, that is, if the territory can maintain, as well as the stock employ,

capital of the nation

A

ploy.

small country with a large navy,

and great inland accommodations for carriage, such as Holland, may, indeed, import and distribute an effectual quantity of provisions; but the price of provisions

be very high

and less

to

make such an

must

importation

number of laborers, this addinumber will quickly spring up, even

a greater

answer in large countries advantageously circumstanced in this distribution

tional

of such wars as Dr. Price enu-

in spite

respect.

An

and

of the necessaries

the revolution

of provisions,

rise

command

greater

merates. And, consequently,

instance, accurately such as I

have supposed, may not, perhaps, ever have occurred, but I have little doubt that instances nearly approximating to it may be found without any very laborious search. Indeed, I am strongly inchned to think that England herself, since the revolution, af-

if

the popula-

any country has been stationary

tion of

we may safely infer that, may have advanced in manu-

declining

or

however

it

facturing wealth,

its

effectual

funds for

the maintenance of labor cannot have increased. It is difficult,

however, to conceive that

fords a very striking elucidation of the ar-

the population of England has been de-

gument in question. The commerce of

clining since the revolution, though every

as well as external, has certainly idly

testimony concurs to prove that

this country, internal

advancing during the

The exchangeable value

been rap-

last

in the

crease,

century.

if it

slow. In the controversy

market of

its

in-

has increased, has been very

which the ques-

tion has occasioned, Dr. Price

undoubtedly

Europe of the annual produce of its land and labor has, without doubt, increased

appears to be

very considerably. But, upon examination,

accurate information than his opponents.

be found that the increase has been produce of labor and not in the produce of land, and therefore, though the wealth of the nation has been advancing with a quick pace, the effectual funds

Judging simply from this controversy, I think one should say that Dr. Price's point is nearer being proved than Mr. Howlett's. Truth, probably, lies between the two statements, but this supposition makes the

maintenance of labor have been and the result is might be expected. The increasing

increase of population since the revolution

it

ter

will

chiefly in the

for the

of

his

much more

subject

and

increasing very slowly,

to

such as

the increase of wealth.

536

have been very slow

in

completely masto

possess

more

comparison with

Malthus: Essay on Population

which

That the produce of the land has been decreasing, or even that it has been abso-

that

lutely stationary during the last century,

for rearing,

few

will

be disposed

closure of

commons and wastelands

tainly tends to increase

country,

beheve. The

to

but

it

in-

cer-

the food of the

has been asserted with

confidence that the inclosure of

common

has frequently had a contrary effect, and that large tracts of land which for-

fields

weight of

merly produced great quantities of com, by being converted into pasture, both employ fewer hands and feed fewer mouths indeed,

beast

It

is,

an acknowledged truth, that pasture land produces a smaller quantity of human sub-

com

land of the same natand could it be clearly ascertained that from the increased demand for butchers, meat of the best quahty, and sistence than

ural fertihty,

its

increased price in consequence, a great-

er quantity of

good land has annually been

employed

grazing,

human stance

in

subsistence,

would

the diminution of

which

this

London. Formerly, meat would not pay

in

cattle

killed, will

at

the different periods

have consumed

(if I

may

be allowed the expression) very different quantities of

may

human

subsistence.

A

fatted

some respects be considered, in the language of the French economists, as an unproductive laborer: he has added nothing to the value of the raw produce that he has consumed. The present system of grazing undoubtedly tends more than in

the former system to diminish the quantity

human

of

subsistence in the country in

proportion to the general

fertilit)^

of the

land.

circum-

occasion, might have coun-

bought

and scarcely for feeding cattle on land that would answer in tillage; but the present price will not only pay for fatting cattle on the ver\' best land, but will even allow of the rearing many, on land that would bear good crops of com. The same number of cattle, or even the same

when

than before their inclosure.

is

the price of butchers'

I

would not by any means be under-

stood to say that the former system either

terbalanced the advantages derived from

could or ought to have continued. The

the inclosure of wastelands, and the gen-

creasing price of butchers'

eral It

ural

improvements in husbandry. scarcely need be remarked that the

meat

is

and inevitable consequence

general progress of cultivation; but

in-

a natof I

the

can-

high price of butchers' meat at present, and its low price formerly, were not caused

not help thinking that the present great

by the

quality,

scarcity

in

demand

for butchers' meat of the best and the quantity of good land that is in consequence annually employed to produce it, together with the great number

the one case or the

plenty in the other, but

by

the different

expense sustained at the different periods, in preparing cattle for the market. It is,

of horses at present kept for pleasure, are

the chief causes that have prevented the

however, possible that there might have been more cattle a hundred years ago in the country than at present; but no doubt

quantity of

can be entertained that there is much more meat of a superior quaUty brought to market at present than ever there was. When

food in the country

the quantity of subsistence in the country,

meat was very low, were reared chiefly upon wastelands; and, except for some of the principal markets, were probably killed with but little other fatting. The veal that is sold so cheap in some distant counties at present bears

the price of butchers'

and consequently on its population. The employment of much of the most fertile land in grazing, the improvements

cattle

httle other

human

from keeping pace with the generally increased fertility of the soil; and a change of custom in these respects would, I have little doubt, have a very sensible effect on

in agricultural instruments, the increase of

large farms and, particularly, the diminu-

resemblance than the name to

tion of the

537

number

of cottages throughout

Great Books Library the are

kingdom

all

concur to prove that there many persons em-

in agricultural labor

ployed period

of

must be employed almost wholly

manufactures, and

is

it

known

well

mense amount.

in

Her immense amount of manufactures, therefore, she would exchange chiefly for

stead of buckles and metal buttons, com-

bined with the restraints in the market of labor arising from corporation and parish laws, have frequently driven thousands on

The

charity for support. is,

luxuries

itself a

whatever

strong

from

collected

world. At present,

great increase of

indeed, of

equally evident that

It is

from the great bulk of provisions and the amazing extent of her inland territory she could not in return import such a quantity as would be any sensible addition to the annual stock of subsistence in the country.

that

the failure of some of these manufactures, merely from the caprice of fashion, such as the adoption of muslins instead of silks, or of shoestrings and covered buttons in-

the poor rates

great honor in

in

cheapness of labor she might work up manufactures for foreign sale to an im-

in-

crease of population, therefore, has taken place,

trade and foreign

if

China, from the plenty of laborers and the

as at the

Whatever

revolution.

the

now

evident that,

It is

commerce were held

not probably so

all

parts

the

of

appears that no labor

it

spared in the production of

is

The country is rather over-peopled proportion to what its stock can employ,

food.

evidence that the poor have not a greater

in

command

and labor is, therefore, so abundant that no pains are taken to abridge it. The consequence of this is, probably, the greatest

ences of

of the necessaries life;

and

if

and conveni-

to the consideration

that their condition in this respect

is

rather

worse than better be added the circumstance that a

them

is

much

employed

sibly afford;

must be acknowledged

that the increase of

happiness of the laboring

poor.

That every increase of the stock or revenue of a nation cannot be considered as an increase of the real funds

.for

it

will

though they may enable a farmer to bring a certain quantity of grain cheaper to market, tend rather to diminish than increase the whole produce, and in agriculture, therefore, may in some respects be consid-

it

wealth of late years has had no tendency to increase the

for

served that processes for abridging labor,

in large manufactories,

unfavorable both to health and virtue,

soil can posbe generally ob-

production of food that the

greater proportion of

ered

rather

than

public

capital could not

be em-

private

as

advantages.

An immense

the mainte-

nance of labor and, therefore, cannot have the same good eflFect upon the condition of the poor will appear in a strong light if the argument be apphed to China. Dr. Adam Smith observes that China has probably long been as rich as the nature of her laws and institutions will admit, but that with other laws and institutions, and if foreign commerce were had in honor, she might still be much richer. The question is: Would such an increase of wealth be an increase of the real funds for the maintenance of labor, and, con-

ployed in China

sequently, tend to place the lower classes

wealth, the exchangeable value of the an-

of people in

China

in

in

preparing manufac-

tures for foreign trade without taking off

so

many

laborers from agriculture as to

al-

and in some degree diminish the produce of the country.

ter this state of things, to

The demand

for

would naturally

manufacturing laborers

raise the price of labor,

but, as the quantity of subsistence

would

not be increased, the price of provisions

would keep pace with than keep pace with provisions

were

it,

it if

really

or even

more

the quantity of

decreasing.

The

country would be evidently advancing in its land and labor would be annually augmented, yet the real funds

nual produce of

a state of greater

plenty?

538

Malthus: Essay on Population for

the maintenance of labor would be even declining, and, conse-

the land, according to the French economay not be a more accurate defini-

stationary, or

mists,

quently, the increasing wealth of the na-

tion.

tion

would rather tend

to depress than to

raise the condition of the poor.

gard

to the

With

re-

command

over the necessaries they would be in the

and comforts of life, same or rather worse state than before; and a great part of them would have exchanged the healthy labors of agriculture for the unhealthy occupations of manufacturing industry.

when

applied to China, because

clearer

it is

gen-

wealth of China With regard to stationary. long has been any other country it might be always a erally allowed that the

matter of dispute

at

which

of

the two

periods compared wealth was increasing the fastest, as

it is

upon the

rapidity of the

increase of wealth at any particular period that. Dr.

Adam

Smith says, the condition

it

that every increase of

is

wealth, according to the definition of the economists, will be an increase of the funds for the

maintenance of labor, and conse-

quently will always tend to ameliorate the condition of the laboring poor, though an increase of wealth, according to Dr.

Smith's definition, will

Adam

by no means

in-

same tendency. And yet may not follow from this consideration

variably have the it

The argument, perhaps, appears

Certain

Adam

that Dr. just.

It

seems

Smith's definition

in

many

is

not

respects improper

and lodging of a whole people from any part of their revenue. Much of it may, indeed, be of very trivial and unimportant value in comparto exclude the clothing

ison with the food of the country, yet

may be

still

considered as a part of its revenue, and, therefore, the only point in which I should differ from Dr. Adam

it

is evident, howtwo nations might increase exactly with the same rapidity in the exchangeable value of the annual produce of their land and labor, yet if one had applied itself chiefly to agriculture, and the other chiefly to commerce, the funds for the maintenance of labor, and consequently

fairly

to consider every

where he seems

of the poor depends. It

Smith,

ever, that

increase of the revenue or stock of a so-

is

ciety as an increase of the funds for the

maintenance of labor, and consequently, as tending always to ameliorate the condition of the poor.

The

fine silks

and

cottons, the laces,

the effect of the increase of wealth in each

may

would be extremely different. In that which had applied itself chiefly to agriculture, the poor would live in great plenty, and population would rapidly increase. In that which had applied itself chiefly to commerce, the poor would be comparatively but little benefited and consequently population would increase

ment the exchangeable value

slowly.

mists consider

nation,

CHAPTER

A

and

other ornamental luxuries of a rich country contribute very considerably to augof

its

annual

produce; yet they contribute but in a very small degree to augment the mass of happiness in the society, and that

it is

with some view

of the produce that

we

it

appears to

me

to the real utility

ought to estimate

the productiveness or unproductiveness of

The French economanufactures as unproductive. Comparing it with the labor employed upon land, I different sorts of labor.

XVII

all

labor employed in

should be perfectly disposed to agree with

them, but not exactly for the reasons which they give. They say that labor employed upon land is productive because the produce, over and above completely paying

question seems naturally to arise here

whether the exchangeable value of the annual produce of the land and labor be the proper definition of the wealth of a country, or whether the gross produce of

the laborer and the farmer, affords a clear

539

Great Books Library rent to the landlord; and that the labor employed upon a piece of lace is unpro-

in obtaining the produce. In their former

merely replaces the provisions that the workman had consumed, and the stock of his employer, without af-

tion of the food of the country

ductive because

employment they consumed

some employment

return

fording any clear rent whatever. But, supposing the value of the wrought lace to be such as that, besides paying in the most

complete manner the workman and his employer, it could aflFord a clear rent to a third person, it appears to me that, in comparison with land,

it

labor

the

would be

still

as

empk)yed upon unproductive as

Though according to the reasoning used by the French economists, the man ever.

employed would, in

the

in

this case,

manufacture of lace seem to be a produc-

tion of the wealth of a state,

be considered

added nothing

He

land:

in that hght.

to the gross

silks

tional quantity of food.

A

capital

employed upon land may be

unproductive to the individual that employs it and yet be highly productive to

tive laborer, yet, according to their defini-

to

a certain por-

and left in and laces. In their latter they consumed the same quantity of food and left in return provision for a hundred thousand men. There can be Uttle doubt which of the two legacies would be the most really beneficial to the country, and it will, I think, be allowed that the wealth which supported the two hundred thousand men while they were producing silk and laces would have been more usefully employed in supporting them while they were producing the addi-

it

he ought not He will have

A

the society.

produce of the

capital

has consumed a portion of this

employed

may be

on the contrary,

in trade,

highly productive

and yet be almost and

to the individual

totally

produce and has left a bit of lace in return; and though he may sell this bit of

unproductive to the society:

lace for three times the quantity of provi-

ing labor unproductive, in comparison of

he consumed while he was making it, and thus be a very productive laborer with regard to himself, yet he cannot be considered as having added by his labor to any essential part of the riches of the

that

gross

the reason

sions that

The

state.

why

which

I

should

employed

is

call

this

is

manufactur-

in agriculture,

and

not for the reason given by the French economists.

It

is,

indeed, almost impossible

to see the great fortunes that are

trade,

and the

many merchants

clear rent, therefore, that a cer-

liberality live,

made

in

with which so

and yet agree

in the

paying the expenses of procuring it, does not appear to be the sole criterion by which to judge of the productiveness or unproductiveness to a state of any particular species of labor. Suppose that two hundred thousand

statement of the economists that manu-

men who

no third person

tain

produce can

are

afford, after

now employed

manufactures that only tend

in

facturers can only

grow

rich

by depriving

themselves of the funds destined for their support. In

many branches

profits are so

great as

clear rent to a third person;

producing

in the case,

profits center in the

to gratify the

of trade the

would allow but

and

of a

as there

is

as all the

master manufacturer,

vanity of a few rich people were to be em-

or merchant, he seems to have a fair chance

ployed upon some barren and uncultivated

growing rich, without much privation; and we consequently see large fortunes acquired in trade by persons who have not been remarked for their parsimony.

lands, tity

and

of

to

food

of

produce only half the quanthat

they themselves

con-

sumed; they would be still, more productive laborers with regard to the state than they were before, though their labor, so far from affording a rent to a third person, would but half replace the provisions used

Daily experience proves that the labor in trade and manufactures is

employed

sufficiently it

540

certainly

productive to individuals, but is

not productive in the same

Malthus: Essay on Population from the redundancy of capital employed upon land. The superior encouragement that has been given to the industry of the towns and the consequent higher

degree to the state. Every accession to the food of a country tends to the immediate benefit of the whole society; but the fortunes

made

in trade

tures rising

tend but in a remote

and uncertain manner to the same end, and in some respects have even a contrary tendency.

The home

is paid for the labor of artificers, than for the labor of those employed in husbandry, are probably the reasons why

price that

trade of con-

most important trade of every nation. China is the richest country in the world, without any other. Putting then, for a moment, foreign trade out of the question, the man who, by an ingenious manufacture, obtains a double sumption

is

by

far

vated.

it might undoubtedly have been much more populous than at present, and yet not be more incumbered

throughout Europe,

by

portion out of the old stock of provisions

be so useful to the state who, by his labor, adds a sin-

man

gle share to the former stock.

The

cannot quit

this curious subject of the

from population, a subject to deserve a minute in-

difficulty arising

that appears to vestigation

con-

yond

laces, commodities of silks, trinkets, and expensive furniture are undoubtedly a part of the revenue of the

sumable

society;

population.

its

I

will certainly not as the

much soil in Europe remains uncultiHad a different policy been pursued

so

the

me

and able discussion much be-

my power

to give

Price's

two volumes of Observations. Hav-

and

the rich, and not of the society in general.

of life in towns

An

increase in this part of the revenue of

says,

"From

a state cannot, therefore, be considered of

with

how much

same importance as an increase of food, which forms the principal revenue

been called the graves

the

also convince all

definition,

though not according

in

the country, he

comparison,

this

who

it

appears,

great cities

truth of

mankind.

consider

it,

It

have must

that ac-

cording to the observation, at the end of

mass of the people. Foreign commerce adds to the wealth of

of the great

Adam

without taking

ing given some tables on the probabilities

but they are the revenue only of

a state, according to Dr.

it,

notice of an extraordinary passage in Dr.

the fourth essay, in the former volume,

Smith's

is

by no means

strictly

it

proper to consider

our diseases as the original intention of

to the def-

inition of the economists. Its principal use,

nature.

and the reason, probably, that it has in general been held in such high estimation, is that it adds greatly to the external power of a nation or to its power of command-

eral

They

our

own

are,

without doubt, in gen-

creation.

Were

there a coun-

ing the labor of other countries; but it will be found, upon a near examination, to contribute but little to the increase of the internal funds for the maintenance of labor, and consequently but little to the happi-

where the inhabitants led lives entirely natural and virtuous, few of them would die without measuring out the whole period of present existence allotted to them; pain and distemper would be unknown among them, and death would come upon them like a sleep, in consequence of no other cause than gradual and unavoidable

ness of the greatest part of society. In the

decay."

try

natural progress of a state towards riches,

I

own

that

I felt

myself obhged to draw

manufactures and foreign commerce would

a very opposite conclusion from the facts

follow, in their order, the high cultivation

advanced in Dr. Price's two volumes. I had for some time been aware that population and food increased in different ratios, and a vague opinion had been floating in my mind that they could only be kept

of the

soil.

In Europe this natural order of

been inverted, and the soil has been cultivated from the redundancy of manufacturing capital instead of manufacthings has

541

Great Books Library Norway, Dentwo or three hundred years ago, he might have found perhaps nearly the same degree of civilization, but by no means the same happiness or the same increase of population. He quotes himself a statute of Henry the Eighth, complaining of the decay of tillage, and the enhanced price of provisions, "whereby a marvellous number of people were rendered incapable of maintaining themselves and families." The superior degree of civil liberty which pre-

equal by some species of misery or vice, but the perusal of Dr. Price's two volumes Observations,

of

opinion had

that

after

cultivated land. In parts of

mark, or Sweden, or in

once to conviction. With so many facts in his view to prove the extraordinary rapidity with

been conceived, raised

which

population

it

at

when

increases

un-

checked, and with such a body of evidence before him to elucidate, even the manner

by which the general laws

of nature re-

press a redundant population,

it

me how

fectly inconceivable to

write the passage that

I

per-

is

he could

have quoted. He for early mar-

was a strenuous advocate riages

as

the

best

vicious manners.

preservative

He had no

against

this country,

in

America,

doubt,

its

share to promote the industry,

contributed,

happiness, and population of these states,

fanciful con-

ceptions about the extinction of the passion

but even

between the sexes, like Mr. Godwin, nor did he ever think of eluding the difficulty in the ways hinted at by Mr. Condorcet.

will not create fresh land.

He

may be

frequently talks of giving the prolific

directed exertions of

food for

its

tonishing as

man

if

rapidity as

A

first,

Price,

speaking civilized

the

of

different

says,

state,

"The

those which favor most the increase and

He

then

enjoy a greater

England, but we may be population will not

that

of

the

did then.

who contemplated

the

happy

lower classes of people in

never exposing her to the sun or air. The situation of new colonies, well governed,

or simple stages of civilization, are

the happiness of mankind."

it is,

The Americans

America twenty years ago would naturally wish to retain them forever in that state, and might think, perhaps, that by preventing the introduction of manufactures and luxury he might effect his purpose, but he might as reasonably expect to prevent a wife or mistress from growing old by

as as-

he had resisted the conclu-

of the

it

person

state

Euclid.

Dr.

powerful as

long continue to increase with the same

sion of one of the plainest propositions of

stages

sure

perfectly

could produce

me

said, perhaps, to

in subjection to

by the best

support, appears to

civil liberty, all

degree of civil liberty, now they are an independent people, than while they were

powers of nature room to exert themselves. Yet with these ideas, that his understanding could escape from the obvious and necessary inference that an unchecked population would increase, beyond comparison, faster than the earth

without

vailed

in-

is

a

bloom of youth that no efforts can There are, indeed, many modes

ar-

American colonies as being at that time in the first and happiest of the states that he had described, and as afford-

body

ing a very striking proof of the effects of

tard the approaches of age, but there can

the different stages of civilization on pop-

be no chance of success, in any mode that could be devised, for keeping either of them in perpetual youth. By encouraging the industry of the towns more than the industry of the country, Europe may be said, perhaps, to have brought on a premature old age. A different policy, in this

stances the

rest.

But he does not seem to be aware that the happiness of the Americans de-

ulation.

pended much

less

upon

their peculiar de-

gree of civilization than upon the peculiarity of their situation as

their

new

colonies,

having a great plenty of

upon

fertile

of

treatment in the pohtical, as well as animal,

un-

542

that contribute to accelerate or re-

Malthus: Essay on Population life and vigor While from the law of primogeniture and other European customs, land bears a monopoly price, a capital can never be employed in it with much advantage to the individual; and, there-

would

respect,

infuse fresh

into every state.

fore, it is not probable that the soil should be properly cultivated. And though in ever)^-

civihzed state a class of proprietors

and a class of laborers must exist, yet one permanent advantage would always result from a nearer equalization of property.

The

the niomber

greater

proprietors,

of

the smaller must be the nimiber of laborers;

a greater part of societ)'

the

happy

state

would be

in

possessing propert)-,

of

and a smaller part in the unhappy state of possessing no other property than their labor. But the best directed exertions, though the)' may alleviate, can never remove the pressiire of want, and it will be difficult for any person who contemplates the genuine situation of man on earth, and the general laws of nature, to suppose that

possible

it

the most enlightened

any,

could place mankind in a state where "few would die without measuring out the whole period of present existence eflForts,

ground.

On

the contrary, the most baleful

may be

mischiefs

manlv conduct because

what

it is

relates

expected from the un-

of not daring to face truth

unpleasing. Independently of to

this

great obstacle,

if

we

unwisely direct our eflForts towards in which we cannot hope for

an object

we

success,

shall

not

only

at

great a distance as ever from the

as

summit

by the

CHAPTER

view of human life which results from the contemplation of the constant pressure of distress on man from the difficult)' of subsistence, by showing the httie

expectation that he can reasonably enperfectibihty

of

gradual and vmavoidable decay."

of those laws of nature

And

great obstacle in the

to

must be

But I hope I be pardoned if I attempt to give a view in some degree diflFerent of the situation of man on earth, which appears to me to be more consistent with the various phenomena of nature which we observe around us and more consonant to our ideas of the power, goodness, and foreknowl-

is

whose exertions improvement is evident that no

to those

are laudably directed to the of the

human

possible

species,

ors to slur

it

it

edge of the Deity. It cannot be considered

from any endeavover or keep it in the back-

good can

trial

of virtue preparatory to a su-

shall

discouraging as the contemplation of this difficulty

temptations to which he must

perior state of happiness.

beyond the

laws of animated nature which

have no reason

the

and school

one of the general we can expect will change. Yet,

of subsistence

seems

frequentiy considered, as a state of

any extraordinar)' improvement in society is of a nature that we can never hope to overcome. The perpetual tendency

means

earth,

be exposed, from the operation which we have been examining, would seem to represent the world in the Hght in which it has been

to

to increase

on

strongly to point his hopes to the future.

undoubtedly, a most disheartening

man

X\^III

The

necessarily

in the race of

be per-

of Sis)^hus.

in consequence of no other cause than

that the

shall

recoil of this rock

tertain

way

we

of our wishes, but

petually crushed

where pain and distemper would be unknown among them; and death would come upon them like a sleep,

It is,

exhaust our

strength in fruitless exertions and remain

allotted to them;

reflection

suffi-

done for mankind to animate us to the most unremitted exertion. But if we proceed without a thorough knowledge and accurate comprehension of the nature, extent, and magnitude of the difficulties we have to encounter, or

cient yet remains to be

arise

ing exercise of the

543

as

an unimprovto endeav-

human mind

Great Books Library ways of God to man" we proceed with a proper distrust of our own understandings and a just sense of our

some Ought we not then to corlect our crude and puerile ideas of Infinite Power from the contemplation of what we actually see existing? Can we judge of the

we

that

all

comprehend the reason

see,

if

we

of

hail every ray of

with gratitude, and

light

when no

appears, think that the darkness

is

to indicate their fitness for

superior state.

if

insufficiency to

seem

as

or to "Vindicate the

light

Greator but from his creation? And, unless

from

we wish

to exalt the

power

of

God we

at the

and bow with himible deference to the supreme wisdom of him whose "thoughts are above our thoughts," "as the heavens are high above

conclude that even to the Great Creator, Almighty as he is, a certain process may be

the earth."

appears to us as time)

within and not from without,

In

expense of his goodness, ought

necessary, a certain time (or at least

our feeble attempts, however, to

all

Almighty

"find out the

to perfection,"

The moment we allow

ourselves

qualities of

we

we

shall

shall

childish

his

never

them

know where all

progress

will

fit

them

for

seems to imply a preformed existence that does not agree with the appearance of man in infancy and indicates something like suspicion and want of foreknowledge, inconsistent with those ideas which we wish to cherish of the Supreme Being. I should be inclined, therefore, as I have hinted before in a note, to consider the world and this life as the mighty process of God, not for the trial, but for the creation and formation of mind, a process necessary to

ask

as they

to stop;

in

mind which

high purposes?

A

be led into the grossest and most absurdities;

what

requisite,

state of trial

viously

things are not otherwise, instead

of endeavoring to account for are,

to

may be

order to form beings with those exalted

in

it

seems absolutely necessary that we should reason from nature up to nature's God and not presume to reason from God to nature.

why some

not to

the

knowledge of the ways of Providence must necessarily be at an end; and the study will even cease to be an improving exercise of the human mind. Infinite power is so vast and incomprehensible an idea that the mind of man must necessarily be bewildered in the contemplation of it. With the crude and puerile conceptions which we sometimes form of this attribute of the Deity, we might imagine that God could call into being myriads and myriads of existences, all free from pain and imperfection, all eminent in goodness and wisdom, all capable of the highest enjoyments, and

es of the Divinity, into a capacity of superi-

unnumbered

or enjoyment.

awaken to elicit

man

many

matter, going through a long

many

of it,

them

receives through

acting

by general

life

may be

consid-

and awakening his by the animating touch-

laws,

sluggish existence,

The

original sin of

man

is

the torpor and corruption of the chaotic

matter in which he It

may be

said to

be bom.

could answer no good purpose to en-

whether mind be a from matter, or only a

ter into the question

distinct substance

ris-

specks of

finer

form of

and some-

after

all,

times painful process in this world, but tion of

an ethereal spark from the clod of in this view of the subject, the

ered as the forming hand of his Creator,

space.

ing apparently from so

spirit, to

various impressions and excitements which

as the points throughout in-

constant succession of sentient beings,

chaotic matter into

And

clay.

But when from these vain and extravagant dreams of fancy, we turn our eyes to the book of nature, where alone we can read God as he is, we see a

finite

inert,

sublimate the dust of the earth into soul,

is

as

it.

The question

is,

perhaps,

a question merely of words.

essentially

Mind

mind, whether formed

from matter or any other substance. We experience that soul and body

attaining, ere the termina-

know from

such high qualities and powers

544

Malthus: Essay on Population are most intimately united, and every appearance seems to indicate that they grow from infancy together. It would be a sup-

are the

ity to believe that a complete and full formed spirit existed in every infant, but that it was clogged and impeded in its operations during the first twenty years of

mind they both seem

to agree that

as well as of

God

seem, even afterwards, to be necessary to that activity which they first awakened. The savage would slvimber forever under his tree, unless he were roused from his torpor by the cravings of hunger or the pinchings of cold; and the exertions that he makes to avoid these evils, by procuring food and building himself a covering, are the exercises which form and keep in motion his faculties, which otherwise

continue

is

body, and

be forming and imthe same time, it cannot appear inconsistent either with reason or revelation, if it appear to be conas

to

folding themselves

sistent

at

with phenomena of nature, to sup-

pose that

God

is

would

constantly occupied in

through

impressions life is

man

that

the structure of the

is

surely worthy of the

man on earth be unattended with probabihty, if, judging from the little experience we have of the nature of mind, it shall appear upon investigation that the phenomena around us, and the various events of himian life, seem pecuharly calculated to promote this great end, and especially if, upon this supposition, we can account, even to our own narrow underThis view of the state of

seem

standings, for

to

many

and inequahties

man his

God

if

those

human mind

motion by the necessity of satisfying the wants of the body. Want has not unfrequently given wings to the

have been

which querulous makes the subject of

complaint against the

human mind,

of the noblest exertions of the

of those roughnesses

in Hfe

too frequently

all

which arise from the wants of the body were removed from the mass of mankind, we have much more reason to think that they would be sunk to the level of brutes, from a deficiency of excitements, than that they would be raised to the rank of philosophers, by the possession of leisure. In those countries where nature is the most redundant in spontaneous produce, the inhabitants will not be found the most remarkable for acuteness of intellect. Necessity has been with great truth called the mother of invention. Some

highest attributes of the Deity. will not

From

stimulants to exertion

receives

the process for that purpose.

The employment

sink into listless inactivity.

that experience has taught us concerning

forming mind out of matter and that the various

and

powerful, are generated, these stimulants

by the weakness, or hebetude, of the organs in which it was enclosed. As we be disposed

into sentient activity;

course of excitements, other wants, equally

life

shall all

stimulants that rouse the brain

man

such seems to be the sluggishness of original matter that unless, by a pecuhar

position attended with very htde probabil-

the creator of

first

of infant

set in

imagination of the poet, pointed the flow-

of nature.

The first great awakeners of the mind seem to be the wants of the body.^ They

ing periods of the historian, and added acuteness to the researches of the philos-

opher; and though there are, undoubtedly, 1

was my some length It

many minds intention

have entered

to

at

into this subject as a kind of second part to the essay. A long interruption, from particular business, has obliged

me

of social

me

have advanced.

I

if

their bodily stim-

were removed, yet it can scarcely be doubted that these stimulants could not be withdrawn from the mass of mankind without producing a general and fatal torulants

the present. I shall now, therefore, only give a sketch of a few of the leading cir-

general supposition that

improved by

sympathy that they would not

relapse into hstlessness

to lay aside this intention, at least for

cumstances that appear to

at present so far

the various excitements of knowledge, or

to favor the

545

Great Books Library por, destructive of

by the full ctJtivation of the earth, it has been ordained that population should in-

the germs of future

all

improvement. Locke,

if

recollect, says that the en-

I

crease

law

deavor to avoid pain, rather than the pursuit of pleasure, is the great stimulus to action in

and that

life;

particular pleasvu"e,

we

shall

contemplation of

amount

as to

it

seem necessary

has continued so long

to a sensation of pain or un-

by these

ing faculty, that the

mind is formed. If Locke's idea be and there is great reason to think that

the laws of nature,

of

with which fect

from the same causes,

dinary coiu-se of things, the finger of

were frequently his

The Supreme Being has

tory labor

upon

able

connection,

God were

frequently to change

even the bodily wants of mankind would cease to stimulate them to exertion, could

or-

they not reasonably expect that

if

their

were well directed they would be crowned with success. The constancy of

prepara-

efforts

and ingenuity has been exersurface. There is no conceiv-

cised

if

God

speak more

visible, or to

purpose (for the finger of God is, indeed, visible in every blade of grass that we see), a general and fatal torpor of the human faculties would probably ensue;

not produce

much

the founda-

is

just,

correctly,

till

certainty

expect the same ef-

it is,

seems to be necessary to create exand exertion seems evidently necessary to create mind. The necessity of food for the support of life gives rise, probably, to a greater quantity of exertion than any other want, bodily shall

we may

The constancy

or the

tion of the faculty of reason. If in the or-

evil

dained that the earth food in great quantities

seems absolutely necessary act always

Supreme Being should

ertion,

or mental.

it

and to and form the reason-

according to general laws.

that

stimulants,

it

to create exertion,

direct this exertion,

under the absence of it. To avoid to pursue good seem to be the great duty and business of man, and this world appears to be pecuUarly calculated to afford opportunity of the most unremitted exertion of this kind, and it is by exertion,

much

may, perproduces a great

httle reflection

overbalance of good. Strong excitements

and

this

but a

haps, satisfy us that

easiness

evil

faster than food. This general

has appeared in the former parts

it

partial evil,

tiU the

it,

much

as

of this essay) imdoubtedly produces

any not be roused

in looking to

action in order to obtain

into

(

the laws of nature

its

is

the foundation of the

our comprehensions,

industry and foresight of the husbandman,

between the seed and the plant or tree that rises from it. The Supreme Creator might, undoubtedly, raise up plants of all lands,

the skilful researches of the physician and

to

the indefatigable ingenuity of the

and the watchful observation and patient investigation of the natural anatomist,

for the use of his creatiores, without the

those

assistance

of

which we

call seed,

assisting labor

little

bits

philosopher.

matter

of

of

form

To

his

mind

for the con-

our understandings, obvious and striking, a we retimi to the principle of population

man

and

the immortal

previously neces-

into action

and consider man as he reaUy is, inert, and averse from labor, unless compelled by necessity (and it is siirely the height of folly to talk of man, according to our crude fancies, of what he might

and

sluggish,

to reason.

this kind,

all

stancy of the laws of nature seem, even to

furnish the most unremitted excite-

ments of

we owe

in his

God

sary to the enjoyment of the blessings of hfe, in order to rouse

constancy

As the reasons, therefore,

ground, of collecting and sowing seeds, are not surely for the assistance of

made

this

To this constancy we owe mind of a Newton.

man. The

processes of ploughing and clearing the

creation, but are

To

the greatest and noblest efforts of intellect.

or even without the

and attention

artificer,

to iirge

man

to

further the gracious designs of Providence,

546

Malthus: Essay on Population

we may pronounce

be),

with certainty

lect),

we

still

see that

cultivation proceeds very slowly,

we may

tivation of the earth,

conclude that a

fairly

have been

insuflRcient.

if

less

stimulus

Even under

duce It

casioned by the law of population tend

and contribute to that inand consequently of impressions, which seems upon the whole favorable to the growth of mind. It versal exertion

finite variety of situations,

population and food increased ratio, it is

probable that

impede the general

purpose of Providence. They excite uni-

the op-

ural fertility for a long period before they

same

have been

way probable

seems, however, every

rather to promote than

would

betake themselves to pasturage or agricul-

Had

distress in countries that

that even the acknowledged difficulties oc-

eration of this constant excitement, savages

ture.

evident that the same principle

long inhabited.

will inhabit countries of the greatest nat-

in the

it is

which, seconded by industry, will people a fertile region in a few years must pro-

would not have been peopled but for the superiority of the power of population to the means of subsistence. Strong and constantly operative as this stimulus is on man to urge him to the culthat the world

is

man

probable that too great or too

little

excitement, extreme poverty, or too great

might never have emerged from the savage state. But supposing that earth once well peopled, an Alexander, a Julius Caesar, a Tamerlane, or a bloody revolution might irrecoverably thin the human race and defeat the great designs of the Cre-

riches

may be

spect.

The middle

The ravages of a contagious disorder would be felt for ages; and an earthquake might unpeople a region forever. The prin-

perate zones of the earth seem to be the

to

mankind

or

the accidents of nature, the partial evils arising

is

seem

contrary to the analogy of

can be a middle region. The tem-

most favorable to the mental and corporeal energies of man, but all cannot be temperate zones. A world, warmed and enlightened but by one sun, must from the laws of matter have some parts chilled by perpetual frosts and others scorched by perpetual heats. Every piece of matter lying on a surface must have an upper and an under side, all the particles cannot be in the middle. The most valuable parts of an oak to a timber merchant are not either the roots or the branches, but these

according to which population in-

creases prevents the vices of

it

regions of society

to intellectual improve-

nature to expect that the whole of so-

ciety

ator.

ciple

be best suited

ment, but all

alike unfavorable in this re-

from general laws, from obstructing

the high purpose of the creation. It keeps the inhabitants of the earth always fully

up to the level of the means of subsistence; and is constantly acting upon man as a powerful stimulus, urging him to the further cultivation of the earth, and to enable it, consequently, to support a more ex-

are absolutely necessary to the existence

tended population. But it is impossible that this law can operate, and produce the effects apparently intended by the Supreme Being, without occasioning partial evil.

of the middle part, or stem,

Unless the principle of population were to

could find out a

be

would cause more of the substance to go to stem, and less to root and branch, he would be right to exert himself in bringing

object in request.

could not possibly

grow without

altered, according to the circumstances

of each separate country

(which would

not only be contrary to our universal experience, with regard to the laws of nature,

which

is

the

if he which

roots or branches, but

mode

of cultivation

such a system into general use. In the same manner, though

but would contradict even our own

reason,

which

The timber merchant expect to make an oak

we

cannot

possibly expect to exclude riches and pov-

sees the absolute necessity

of general laws for the formation of intel-

erty from society, yet

547

if

we

could find out

Great Books Library government by which the numwould be lessened and the numbers in the middle regions increased, it would be undoubtedly our duty to adopt it. It is not, however, improbable that as in the oak, the roots and branches could not be diminished very greatly without weakening the vigorous a

mode

any observable diflFerence, from their diflEerent situations. Exertion and activity are in general absolutely necessary in the one case and

of

if

there really

can only

bers in the extreme regions

are only optional in the other.

That the generate find

ciety the extreme parts could not be diminished beyond a certain degree without

port

hope

the very

man

dustry did not bring with idleness

its

would not

certainly

upon

we ought

be what they this subject,

now it

sorrows The another

But

activit)-.

review the various

if

useful

coveries, the valuable writings,

laudable exertions of mankind,

we

and other I

believe at-

ate upon the many than to the apparently more enlarged motives that operate upon

is,

without doubt, highly valu-

able to man, but taking

man

difficulties

in

form which

distresses of life

of

excitements,

to

of impressions, to soften

tributed to the narrow motives that oper-

the few. Leisure

frequently

be necessary, by a peculiar train and humanize the heart, to awaken social sympathy, to generate all the Christian virtues, and to afford scope for the ample exertion of benevolence. The general tendency of a uniform course of prosperity is rather to degrade than exalt the character. The heart that has never known sorrow itself will seldom be feeUngly aJive to the pains and pleasures, the wants and wishes, of its fellow beings. It will seldom be overflowing with that warmth of brotherly love, those kind and amiable affections, which dignify the human character even more than the

seem

dis-

should find that more were to be

and

class

pecuhar course of excitements, would not need the constant action of narrow motives

we

families,

evi-

is

cording to the chances, out of so great a

to

or

faculties that

CHAPTER XIX

are.

to consider chiefly the

continue them in

men

reward and

it its

mass, that, having been vivified early by a

to

exertions that

which they are involved.

in-

mass of mankind and not individual instances. There are undoubtedly many minds, and there ought to be many, ac-

were

themselves

punishment, the middle parts

In reasoning

dent that

if

The

necessary to make, in order to sup-

quate to grapple with the

could

to rise or fear to fall in society,

us.

Ufe contribute to

every day's experience

might otherwise have lain forever dormant, and it has been commonly remarked that new and extraordinary situations generally create minds ade-

cause that they are the most favorable to the growth of intellect. If no

it

awaken

lessening that animated exertion throughis

difficulties of

talents,

must convince

circulation of the sap in the stem, so in so-

out the middle parts, which

is

arise

possession of the highest talents. Talents,

the

indeed, though undoubtedly a very promi-

probability seems to be that in the greater

nent and fine feature of mind, can by no

number

means be considered as constituting the whole of it. There are many minds which have not been exposed to those excitements that usually form talents, that have yet been vivified to a high degree by the

of instances

rather than good. It

as

he

is,

produce evil has been not unfreit

will

quently remarked that talents are more

common among younger among elder brothers, but

than can scarcely

brothers it

be imagined that younger brothers upon an average, bom with a greater inal susceptibility of parts.

The

excitements of social sympathy. In every

are,

rank of

orig-

life,

in the lowest as frequently as

in the highest, characters are to

diflFerence,

548

be found

Malthus: Essay on Population

human kindtowards God and

overflowing with the milk of

breathing

ness,

love

man, and though without those peculiar powers of mind called talents, evidently holding a higher rank in the scale of beings than many who possess them. Evancharity,

gelical

meekness, piety, and

all

that class of virtues distinguished particularly

by the name

of Christian virtues

do

not seem necessarily to include abilities, yet a soul possessed of these amiable qualsoul

a

ities,

awakened and

vivified

by

these delightful sympathies, seems to hold

a nearer

commerce with

the skies than

mere acuteness of intellect. The greatest talents have been frequently misapplied and have produced evil proportionate to the extent of their powers.

Both reason and revelation seem sure us that such minds will be

to

as-

undergone the further process necessary to give firmness and durability to its substance, while the other is still exposed to injury, and liable to be broken by every accidental impulse. An ardent love and admiration of virtue seems to imply the existence of something opposite to it, and it seems highly probable that the same beauty of form and substance, the same perfection of character could not be generated without the impressions of disapprobation which arise from the spectacle of

moral

the mind has been awakened into by the passions and the wants of the body, intellectual wants arise; and the desire of knowledge and the impatience under ignorance form a new and important class of excitements. Every part of nature activity

condemned

seems peculiarly calculated to furnish stimulants to mental exertion of this kind, and to offer inexhaustible food for the most unremitted inquiry. Our immortal Bard

but while on earth, these vicious instruments performed their part in the great mass of impressions, by the disgust and abhorrence which they excited. It seems highly probable that moral to eternal death;

evil

says of Cleopatra-

Custom cannot stale Her infinite variety.

absolutely necessary to the produc-

is

tion of

moral excellence.

A being

with only

The

good placed in view may be justly said to be impelled by a blind necessity. The pursuit of good in this case can be no indication of. virtuous propensities. It might be said, perhaps, that Infinite

a state of

trial,

amplification,

Upon

disapprobation and disgust at different

and has it

is

distinct

it

is

accurately

true

parts

that support the superior,

though they sometimes offend the fastidious microscopic eye of short-sighted man, contribute to the symmetry, grace, and fair

felt

proportion of the whole.

essen-

The

from the being that has

have received

but

applied to nature. Infinite variety

inferior

infinite variety of the

forms and op-

immeawaken and improve the mind

erations of nature, besides tending

seen only good. They are pieces of clay that

applied to any one

considered as a poetical

blended in the picture give spirit, life, and prominence to her exuberant beauties, and those roughnesses and inequalities, those

this idea, the

evil

when

seems, indeed, eminently her characteristic feature. The shades that are here and there

Wisdom cannot

but will not hold against mind in this world is

in a state of formation.

may be

when

the supposition that

being that has seen moral

expression,

object,

want such an indication as outward action, but would foreknow with certainty whether the being would choose good or evil. This might be a plausible argument against

tially

evil.

When

diately to

impressions:

they must, therefore, necessarily be in different shapes; or, even if we allow them

by the

both to have the same lovely form of virtue, it must be acknowledged that one has

provement by offering so wide and extensive a field for investigation and research.

ates,

549

variety of impressions that

opens other

fertile

sources

it

cre-

of

im-

Great Books Library Uniform,

could

perfection

undiversified

together with the endless food for specula-

which metaphysical subjects

not possess the same awakening powers.

tion

When we

prevent the possibility that such a period

endeavor then

contemplate

to

the system of the universe,

when we

should ever arrive.

think

of the stars as the suns of other systems

we

reflect that

we do

It is

when

scattered throughout infinite space,

ings

beaming

light

and

life

is

unnumbered

to

when our minds unable in admiration

at

us not querulously complain that

all

additions

ing.

us

that

the

variety

infinite

tain period,

These impressions may, and from these various modifications, added probof

ably to a difference in the susceptibility of the original germs, ^ arise the endless diversity of

add

calculated, to

which

arise

human

furnish

curiosity

endless

and

exertion.

of success, invigorates

thinking

to

may be

motives

1

to

The con-

faculty.

If

even if and improves

the

subjects

inquiry were once exhausted,

It is

probable that no two grains of wheat

are exactly alike. Soil undoubtedly makes the principal difference in the blades that

stant eflFort to dispel this darkness,

the

see in the world;

that surrounds these interest-

of

intellectual activity

human

we

minds does not increase in proportion to the mass of existing knowledge. The finest minds seem to be formed rather by efforts at original thinking, by endeavors to form new combinations and to discover new truths, than by passively receiving the impressions of other men's ideas. Could we suppose the period arrived when there was

all

reason that he should not engage in them.

it fail

character that

but reason and experience seem both

thirst of

to

impressions.

indeed, be infinitely modified,

of

knowledge. It is probable that man, while on earth, will never be able to attain complete satisfaction on these subjects; but this is by no means a

intended

perhaps admit

appears to me, in the

that class of excitements

topics

will not

assure us that the capacity of individual

same manner peculiarly

ing

and

while on earth of above a certain number

meta-

obscurity that involves

The darkness

from

a speck, continues in vigor only for a cer-

greatest possible quantity of good.

from the

knowledge do have been much below them inferior in

in intellectual capacity. Intellect rises

(and variety cannot exist without or apparent blemishes) is admirably adapted to further the high purpose of the creation and to produce the

to

Socrates, a Plato, or an Aristotle,

not appear to

inferior parts,

physical subjects

mass of

to the philosophers of the present day,

nature

The

A

however confessedly

same advantages, that clouds and tempests sometimes darken the natural world and vice and misery the moral world, and that all the works of the creation are not formed with equal perfection. Both reason and experience seem to indito

to the

any marked and decided manner increas-

possess the

cate

would be making

let

God's creatures do not

all

it

cli-

mates are not equally genial, that perpetual spring does not reign throughout the year, that

the contrary,

human knowledge, and yet, perhaps, it may be a matter of doubt whether what may be called the capacity of mind be in

the mighty

incomprehensible power of the Creator,

On

probable that were the present system

to continue for millions of years, continual

to grasp

the immeasurable conception sink, lost and

confounded

by no means one of the wisest saySolomon that "there is no new

of

thing under the sun."

not probably see a

millionth part of those bright orbs that are

worlds,

oflFer,

spring up, but probably not all. It seems natural to suppose some sort of difference in the original germs that are afterwards awakened into thought, and the extraordinary difference of susceptibility in very young children seems to confirm the sup-

of

mind

would probably stagnate; but the infinitely diversified forms and operations of nature,

position.

550

Malthus: Essay on Population convinced that an ovei-powering conviction

no further hope of future discoveries, and to ac-

of this kind, instead of tending to the im-

quire pre-existing knowledge, without any

provement and moral amelioration of man, would act like the touch of a torpedo on all intellectual exertion and would almost put an end to the existence of virtue. If the scriptural denunciations of eternal punishment were brought home with the same

the only

employment

of

mind was

eflForts to form new and original combinations: though the mass of human knowledge were a thousand times greater than it is at present, yet it is evident that one of the noblest stimulants to mental exertion would have ceased; the finest feature

certainty to every man's

mind

as that the

would be lost; everything allied to genius would be at an end; and it appears to be impossible that, under such

night will follow the day, this one vast and

circumstances, any individuals could poss-

room

of intellect

same

ess the

gloomy idea would take such

Shakespeare,

a

were Newton, or a

even by a Socrates,

or

a

Homer. If a revelation from heaven of which no person could feel the smallest doubt were to dispel the mists that now hang over metaphysical subjects, were to explain the nature and structure of mind, the afiFections and essences of all substances, the mode in which the Supreme Being operates in the works of the creation, and the whole plan and scheme of the universe, such an accession of knowledge so obPlato,

an

Aristotle, or a

tion,

human mind, would

activity to the

tion

and

to

damp

For this reason doubts and

that

Our

From of the

objections

the

little

human

to

involve

not,

I

think,

repeated experience that they are not ac-

companied with evidence of such a nature as to overpower the human will and to

make men

lead virtuous lives with vicious

dispositions,

of the structure

understanding,

and vice are

would call an action which was performed simply and solely from the dread of a very great punishment or the expectation of a very great reward. The fear of the Lord is very justly said to be the beginning of wisdom, but the end of wisdom is the love of the Lord and the admiration of moral good. The denunciations of future punishment contained in the scriptures seem to be well calculated to arrest the progress of the vicious and awaken the attention of the careless, but we see from

such a revelation.

we know

how human

really virtuous

yet sufficiently strong to see the most

striking

ideas of virtue

but few,

in

some parts of the sacred writings as any argument against their divine original. The Supreme Being might, undoubtedly, have accompanied his revelations to man by such a succession of miracles, and of such a nature, as would have produced universal overpowering conviction and have put an end at once to all hesitation and discussion. But weak as our reason is to comprehend the plans of the Great Creator, it is

conceive

perhaps, very accurate and well-defined;

have never considered

difficulties

difficult to

and a love and admiration of God, and of moral excellence.

the soaring wings of in-

I

it is

of moral evil,

tellect.

the

for

beings could be formed to a detestation

probability tend to repress future exer-

all

posses-

faculties as to leave

must necessarily make the same impressions on man, who can judge only from external appearances. Under such a dispensa-

tained, instead of giving additional vigor

and

full

no any other conceptions; the external actions of men would be aU nearly alike; virtuous conduct would be no indication of virtuous disposition; vice and virtue would be blended together in one common mass; and, though the all-seeing eye of God might distinguish them, they

intellectual energies as

possessed by a Locke,

human

sion of the

after.

we must be

A

faith that

551

merely from a dread of here-

genuine

shows

faith,

by which

itself in all

I

mean a

the virtues of

Great Books Library a truly Christian

life,

may

generally be

considered as an indication of an amiable and virtuous disposition, operated upon

by pure unmixed fear. more by When we reflect on the temptations to which man must necessarily be exposed in this world, from the structure of his frame, and the operation of the laws of nature, and the consequent moral certainty that many vessels will come out of this mighty creative furnace in wrong shapes, it is perfectly impossible to conceive that any of these creatures of God's hand can be condemned to eternal suffering. Could we

ation of general laws,

happiness. Life

love than

once admit such an idea, all our natural conceptions of goodness and justice would be completely overthrown, and we could

God

as a merciful

and

righteous Being. But the doctrine of

life

no longer look up

to

and immortality which was brought to light by the gospel, the doctrine that the end of righteousness is everlasting life, but that the wages of sin are death, is in every respect just and merciful, and worthy of the Great Creator. Nothing can appear more consonant to our reason than that those beings which come out of the creative process of the world in lovely and beautiful forms should be crowned with immortality, while those which come out misshapen, those whose minds are not suited to a purer and happier state of existence should perish and be condemned to mix again with their original clay. Eternal condemnation of this kind may be conit

is

not wonderful that

it

But

fear of death.

that

to

New

The partial pain, therefore, by the Supreme Creator,

inflicted is

forming numberless beings to

a capacity of the highest enjoyments,

is

but as the dust of the balance in comparthe happiness that is communiand we have every reason to think that there is no more evil in the world than what is absolutely necessary as one of the ingredients in the mighty process. ison

of

cated,

The

striking necessity of

general laws

for the formation of intellect will not in

any respect be contradicted by one or two exceptions, and these evidently not intended for partial purposes but calculated to operate upon a great part of mankind, and through many ages. Upon the idea that I have given of the formation of mind, the infringement of the general laws of nature, by a divine revelation, will appear in the light of the immediate hand of God mixing new ingredients in the mighty mass, suited to the particular state of the process,

and calculated

new and powerful

to give rise to a

train

of

impressions,

and improve the human mind. The miracles that accompanied these revelations when they had once excited the attention of mankind, and rendered it a matter of most interesting discussion, whether the doctrine was from God or man, had performed their part, had answered the purpose of the Creator; and these communications of the divine will were afterwards left to make their way by their own intrinsic excellence; and by operating as moral motives, gradually to influence and improve, and not to overpower and stagnate the faculties of man. It would be, undoubtedly, presumptuous to say that the Supreme Being could not

tending to purify,

should be

and death, salvation and more frequently opposed

each other in the

is

while he

life

destruction are

state. It is a gift

which the vicious would not always be ready to throw away, even if they had no

represented, sometimes, under images of suffering.

generally speaking, a blessing

is,

independent of a future

sidered as a species of eternal punishment,

and

had not been formed

with qualities suited to a purer state of

Testament than

happiness and misery. The Supreme Being

would appear to us in a very different view if we were to consider him as pursuing the creatures that had offended him with eternal hate and torture, instead of merely condemning to their original insensibility those beings that, by the oper-

552

exalt,

Malthus: Essay on Population though upon this supposition, it seems highly improbable that evil should ever be removed from the world, yet it is

possibly have effected his purpose in any

other

way than

that

tion. But,

which he has chosen,

but as the revelation of the divine will which we possess is attended with some doubts and

difficulties,

and

as

evident

that

this

impression

would not

answer the apparent purpose of the Creator; it would not act so powerfully as an

our reason

points out to us the strongest objections to

the quantity of

a revelation

excitement to exertion

imphcit, universal belief,

did not diminish or increase with the ac-

which would force immediate, we have surely just cause to think that these doubts and difficulties are no argument against the divine origin of the scriptures, and that the species of evidence which they possess is best suited to the improvement of the human faculties and the moral amelioration of mankind. The idea that the impressions and excitements of this world are the instruments with which the Supreme Being forms matter into mind, and that the necessity of constant exertion to avoid evil and to pursue good is the principal spring of these impressions and excitements, seems to smooth many of the difficulties that occur in a contemplation of human life, and appears to

me

tivity or the

and moral

certainly arises

is

The con-

weight and in the distribution of this pressure keep alive a constant expectation of throwing it off.

Hope

Man

springs eternal in the

never

is,

human

but always to be

breast,

blest.

Evil exists in the world not to create

despair but activity.

We

are not patiently

submit to it, but to exert ourselves to avoid it. It is not only the interest but the duty of every individual to use his utmost to

efforts to remove evil from himself and from as large a circle as he can influence, and the more he exercises himself in this duty, the more wisely he directs his efforts, and the more successful these efforts are, the more he will probably improve and exalt his own mind, and the more completely does he appear to fulfill the will

evil,

and, consequently, for that part of both,

and it which

indolence of man.

it

tinual variations in the

to give a satisfactory reason

for the existence of natural

if

not a very small part,

from the principle of popula-

of his Creator.

553

NOTE TO THE READER

A tion

proper evaluation of the ideas and theEssay on Popula-

cused primarily on the theories of Godwin and Condorcet, his criticisms are directed at Utopian theories in general. For the views of other philosophers concerning the

ories set forth in the

possible only

is

if

they are compared

with the views expressed in other impor-

works on the same

tant

reader

who

wishes to

subjects.

make such

The

possibility

and the

a com-

stitutions essential to

parison can easily locate relevant passages in

ment

course, his theory of population growth.

For passages in Great Books of the Western World in which the causes and effects of an increase or decrease in population are discussed, the reader should consult

the pages cited in the Syntopicon chapter 4c.

theory, Malthus draws the conclusion that poverty is inevitable, and that its inevitability should be assumed in all legislation affecting the poor. For other views concerning the his

population

Why How

does evil exist? Is evil necessary? can the existence of evil be reconciled with the perfect goodness of an omnipotent God? A general discussion of these issues can be found in the introductory essay to the Syntopicon chapter on

causes of poverty, the possibility of pre-

venting or eliminating laws,

it,

the role of poor

and the precepts of charity with

re-

spect to the poor, see the passages cited in

Ae

chapter on

Wealth

under topics

Good and

8,

Following his discussion of population

and poverty, Malthus turns

of evil,

to a consid-

his

attention

is

and the necessity for experience of under Good and Evil Id,

evil are cited

eration of the possibility of achieving an

Though

Evil. Specific passages dealing

with the origin, nature, and existence of evil, the divine goodness and the problems

8c-8d, and lOe(l).

ideal society.

in-

see the passages

cited

The most important of the theories advanced by Malthus in the Essay is, of

From

it,

an ideal society,

and economic

under State 6-6h and Govern2e. For optimistic and pessimistic views about the perfectibility of man, see the passages cited under Progress lb and Ic. Several pages of the Essay are devoted to an analysis of the various ways of defining the wealth of a state. For other theories concerning the elements of wealth and the factors determining the prosperity of states, see the passages cited under Wealth 1 and 9b. In the final chapters of the Essay, Malthus takes up the general problem of evil.

Great Books of the Western World with

the aid of the Syntopicon.

on State under topic

of achieving

political, social,

lb,

fo-

554

and 6b.

PART FIVE

Additions to the Syntopicon

Each of the 102 chapters of the Syntopicon contains a Readings.

The

list

list

of Additional

composed of works not are recommended which the Western World

for each chapter

is

in-

for

cluded in Great Books of supplementary reading because they make important contributions to the discussion of the topics dealt with in the chapter. Because Great Books of the Western World includes only a few twentieth-century works, the Editors paid special attention to recently published

books

in constructing the lists of Additional Readings.

of these

lists

was completed

in 1950; since then

many

The compilation significant

works

have appeared. The reading lists below are designed to bring the lists of Additional Readings up to date. In this one respect, and in this alone, the Syntopicon needs to be supplemented from time to time. In preparing these supplementary lists, we have divided the 102 chapters of the Syntopicon into several groups of closely related chapters. In The Great Ideas Today 1962, reading lists for the chapters dealing with ideas in the sphere of law and government were offered. This year, reading lists have been prepared for the chapters dealing with ideas in the sphere of biology and psychology. In future editions of The Great Ideas Today,

we

will furnish lists for the other groups of chapters.

we have followed the same general were employed in constructing the Syntopicon lists of Additional Readings. However, we have allowed ourselves a little more latitude and applied somewhat less exacting standards because the books under review have all been published within the last few years, and it is more difiBcult to assess the permanent value of very recent works. In selecting the books listed below,

principles that

ANIMAL Carson, Rachel,

Houghton Frisch,

Silent

Mifflin

Karl Von,

Spring.

TiNBERGEN, N., Soclol Behoviour in Animals. New York: John Wiley & Sons,

Boston:

Bees:

1953.

Inc.,

Company, 1962.

,

Their Vision,

The Study

of Instinct.

Oxford University

Chemical Senses, and Language. Ithaca:

Press,

New

York:

1951.

Cornell University Press, 1950.

GoETSCH, WiLHELM, The Atits, trans, by Ralph Manheim. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1957. La Barre, Weston, The Human Animal. Chicago: The University of Chicago

DESIRE Hubert, The Many Faces of Love: The Psychology of the Emotional and Sexual Life, trans, by Philip Mairet. New York: Pantheon Books, Inc., 1955.

Benoit,

Press, 1954.

557

Additions to the Syntopicon

A

Systematic

York:

The Ron-

BiNDRA, Dalbir, Motivation:

New

Reinterpretation.

ald Press Co., 1959.

Heider, Fritz, The Psychology of Interpersonal Relations, Ch. 5. New York:

John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 1958. Peters, R. S., The Concept of Motivation.

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