Imagens da página
PDF
ePub

I

RETARDED EVOLUTION.

BY H. R. VANDERBYLL.

IN THE May issue of The Open Court a splendid article appeared under the title, "Retarded Evolution", by T. Swann Harding. It is not my purpose to criticise the article in question merely for the sake of being critical. I heartily sympathize with Mr. Harding's main viewpoint. His ideas concerning healthy development of soul and intellect coincides with my own. But, somehow, Mr. Harding's article, to me at least, embodies not so much a statement as well as a question. That question is: why does the average man not like the things that are instructive to the mind and elevating to the soul? It is a question which has been asked by all those who meditate on the mysttry of being and who love the beauties of the universe. It is also a question which has seldom been answered in an impartial manner. The emotions which a Chopin aroused in me

once served as a standard that judged and condemned the apparently crude emotions of my fellow man. Goethe, Shakespeare, Emerson, brought out in somber relief the stupidity and the perverseness of the average man.

But the simple truth is, though our prejudice rather stubbornly refuses to recognize it, that man cannot be educated, coaxed, or threatened to like certain things. His likes and dislikes are part of his make-up. Or, better, they betray its nature. They roughly indicate how far along the road of human development the individual has traveled.

In this case, as in all problems touching on human existence, we must consider individuality. It is something which we do not consider enough. We admit that there are no two people alike. But we fail to see the fundamental truth of nature at which our admission hints. And we certainly retard our admission every time that we judge our fellow by ourselves, i. e., our mental, moral and artistic selves. For this is really what we

do when we think of our erring fellowman in connection with Emerson or Beethoven. We are the ones who seem to be capable of appreciating the great thinkers and composers, and it surprises us that the average man fails to appreciate them, and that he is not the least bit interested in what they wrote or composed.

Our likes and dislikes, however, whether they concern literature, music or recreation, roughly hint at a certain degree of human development. And there are as many degrees of human development as there are stars in the sky-a fact which we admit to be true in theory but not in practice. Theoretically, we divide humanity into races that represent different degrees of civilization. We dimly recognize that one nation belonging to a certain race is superior, intellectually, morally and artistically, to another belonging to the same race. Thus we place milestones along the road of human progress. We err, however, in that we do not line this road with an unbroken, closely packed row of such milestones. We do not seem to grasp that there are innumerable products of human evolution that gradually fill the intellectual and moral gap between ignorant, beastly John and brilliant, unselfish Harry.

The supreme mistake which we make in practice is that we do not consider individuality at all, with the exception perhaps of our own. We are deeply impressed with what we do, think, or like, and seem to take it for granted that it is possible and desirable. that our fellow being does, thinks, likes or dislikes as we do. And so we send missionaries to savages to present them with a religion which is absolutely foreign to their nature and understanding. Not merely this! We actually ignore the existence of stepping stones between the savage and the genius-stepping stones of intellectual and moral development. We would present a heterogeneous humanity, with a billion degrees of brain-development, with a single religion. It's impossible, of course, as facts clearly prove.

But not only religion, also literature and music, painting and art in general, would we choose for and force upon our fellow being. Fortunately or unfortunately, as the case may be, we are never successful in an undertaking of this sort. We generally end with bitter criticism or condemnation, realizing inwardly that we are face to face with a hopeless task. If we could only realize that thoughts, ideals, conceptions of beauty, reveal the inner man, the mysterious personality which is evolving, should we not then be more willing to let nature take its course? Or should we conclude

that evolution in many cases is slow and sluggish, or that its progress has been retarded in some inexplicable manner?

I think that such a conclusion can only be forced upon us by our impatience, by our ardent desire to see humanity on a single intellectual and moral level, which also is our own. Impartial observation and reasoning should impress us with the fact that evolution, which is the deity's eternal weaving of the web of existence, must be beyond reproach and above criticism. There is only one present possible. It is here, now. To imagine a different present than the one existing is to imagine the gross imperfections of the nature of that which is perfect.

Evolution never jumps. It follows the alphabet of creation in a mathematical and logical manner. If to-day it says a, then tomorrow it will say b, not r or . Humanity does not consist of blackguards and saints, of savages and genii. There are innumerable intermediate stages of human development that link these extremes. Between ignorance and wisdom, how many different combinations of ignorance and wisdom can be found? Immorality and morality meet almost imperceptibly. And likewise in music, there are instances where the naked rythm that charms the savage blends with melody to produce music. In poetry this rythm becomes the background against which the sublimity of thought must loom up.

The closer man is to the savage state, the cruder and the more primitive are his thoughts, his morals, and his art. If we have had an opportunity to dive into the depths of humanity, we must confess that quite a bit of the savage is still clinging to us. Manicures and tailor-made clothes cannot hide that fact. And the sort of music that we like, or the books that we love to read, or the nature of our recreations, will reveal it. Judging from the indifference displayed by the average man towards the great writers, thinkers and artists, humanity is not as remote from the savage state as we sometimes fondly dream. We have but to analyze popular literature, music, or recreations, to find the primitive in man hidden in a veneer of modernity and civilization.

How does the savage in man express itself? In love for self, in intense self-centeredness. In pre-historic times when evolution operated through simpler channels the belly was the individual's main concern. His feelings were reached through his stomach, and his mental life, his art, and his feasts were founded on appetite. To-day it is ME which concerns the individual most. And so long as this thought for and of ME is all-predominant, true civilization.

is still in an embryonic state. When I stated that there are as many degrees of human development as there are stars in the sky, I had in mind the innumerable degrees of love for ME which we encounter. It is what evolution secretly tries to moderate, this originally intense self-centeredness. Its gradual destruction means growing enlightenment, increasing knowledge of the universe, greater appreciation of and love for beauty.

The most intense self-centeredness we find in the savage, the least intense in the highly developed human being. If we so desire, we may penetrate beyond the domain of man into that of the animal kingdom and find a still deeper darkness enveloping the individual. Further than this, we may consider the vegetable kingdom, say, a tree. There it stands, rooted in the soil, its limbs reaching towards the warm sky, utterly unaware of the existence of an infinite, many-membered universe. It is only sensitive to the impressions that benefit or harm its being, such as are caused by the sun, by the wind, by rain.

On a higher level of evolutionary development, among human beings, we find impressions that reach the individual from the external world limited to just a few that immediately concern his ME. Such a person is undeveloped. His being is surrounded by darkness, and the one thing of which he is constantly aware is his ME. Impressions and emotions are few and unvaried, experience is of a simple and uniform nature, and knowledge of the universe is of course almost completely absent. We find his particular degree of development revealed in his thoughts, his actions, his likes and dislikes, his loves and hates.

The being of the little self-centered person is highly sensitive to impressions from the external world. An infinite universe exists to him, stirs his soul, arouses his intellect. To him exist, as a consequence, mystery, thought, knowledge, emotion, experience, sadness, beauty. We admire him on account of the astonishing absence of thought of self in him, on account of his utter devotion to science, to art, to philosophy, or to humanity. We praise him for his intelligence, his goodness, his unselfishness, his great love for beauty. But there is no praise due him. His intellectual, artistic or moral qualities belong to him as perfume belongs to the rose. They are the necessary expressions of his particular being.

Here is the point that I wish to emphasize. No man is ultimately responsible for the manner in which he expresses himself in life. The simple truth is that he is not the author of his being.

The emotions that penetrate into his soul do so because his soul is what it is. The thoughts that awaken in his brain are determined by the quality of his gray matter. We unthinkingly wish that our neighbor would devote himself to the study of the philosophers, that he would read serious and mind-cultivating literature. These days, opportunity for intellectual development presents itself almost everywhere. And why then does he not avail himself of that opportunity? Perverseness, we say, or indifference, or laziness. Nothing of the kind! He turns his back to opportunity because he does not recognize it. It is not opportunity to him and for him. It offers intellectual development which is not required by his particular intellect.

Give the fishes their water, and the birds their air! Milk for babies, and meat for the grown man, says the Bible. Also, render unto Caesar the things that are Cæsar's. Allow the individual being its corresponding expressions of ignorance or wisdom, of ugliness or beauty. If knowledge be a pearl, shall not he who is incapable of assimilating it trample upon it, if not viciously then at least blindly? Was it not Jesus, the Christ, who fully recognized and considered the limitations of man as an individual being? His disciples were carefully chosen by Him. And if we translate the symbolic and poetic language of the Bible into plain, modern English, we read that He addressed them as follows: "Gentlemen, you are fortunate in being able to grasp the mysteries of the universe. I, your teacher, therefore speak to you plainly, calling things by their right names, acquainting you with all that I know. But the average man is incapable of understanding such matters. For that reason do I speak to him in parables. He will extract from these parables such truth as his brain is able to digest."

There is a very, very old saying: Where there is a pupil, there is a teacher. This saying embodies one of the most marvelous laws of life, viz., the law of intellectual and moral supply and demand. What most of us do not realize is that the things needed for the immediate development of our intellect and of our soul are scattered through life and through the universe. The fact to which we are completely blind is that the human being himself, in most cases unknowingly, from that unlimited supply picks the very things needed for his immediate intellectual, moral and spiritual development. The supply in question consists in many instances of experience with its resulting impressions and emotions. In other instances it is represented by books, teachers, music. In short,

« AnteriorContinuar »