At one time the English laws regulated the conditions under which a man might beat his wife. "The stick," said the law, "must not be thicker than the husband"s thumb."
Some Englishmen have very thick thumbs, and the law was doubtless hard on some thin, worn-out women.
But that law is no longer needed.
Men have outgrown the need of regulations in wife-beating. In time they will outgrow the need of laws regarding infidelity and lack of self-respect.
MAN"S WILLINGNESS TO WORK
What a fortunate thing it is that men want to work and like to live! Suppose for a moment that the out-of-work, hungry, unlucky creatures, numbering one hundred thousand in New York City, should suddenly change their character.
It is a harmless supposition, as it implies that a great body of good, though unlucky, men should be suddenly metamorphosed. But suppose, for instance, that one hundred thousand men should have a meeting and say:
"The State provides food, lodging and good care for every thief.
It does not provide anything for us. Let us therefore accept the situation like philosophers and become thieves."
Suppose the hundred thousand men thereupon, very quietly, without any show of violence, should each proceed to steal something and then announce the intention to accept the consequence by pleading guilty. It would embarra.s.s the State and the reigning powers, would it not?
What could society do with a hundred thousand self-confessed thieves to take care of? It could not lock them up. It could not let them go. It could not nominally sentence them and have the Governor pardon them, because the hundred thousand would then proceed to steal something else.
What could be done? Nothing. There is no punishment save imprisonment for theft, and the wholesale thieves would ask for and demand imprisonment with the usual rations.
We think society is well balanced and that everything is ingeniously provided for.
So it is; but everything hinges on the extraordinary fact that the hungry, thin, common, shiftless, luckless man at the very bottom is still a MAN. He will not be a thief, and he will die of hunger and cold, as poor fellows do almost every winter day, rather than take the food that society guarantees to the thief.
We attribute much to our own wisdom and the wisdom of our laws.
But we owe almost everything to the instinct of self-preservation and to that second, very peculiar, instinct called pride.
THE HUMAN BRAIN BEATS THE COAL MINES
For six million years, during the carboniferous period, the tree ferns dropped their pollen dust to the earth forming coal beds which now cook our dinners and incidentally make J. Pierpont Morgan so prosperous.
A good deal of useless anxiety has been devoted to the questions:
What will the human race do when the coal gives out? Shall we freeze, or begin planting huge forests of wood, or what?
In the first place, coal will not give out for a long, long time.
In the second place, its disappearance will not make the slightest difference, for in the few cubic inches of the human brain nature has stored up treasures greater than all those hidden in the depths of the earth. The creation of the human brain took more years than the creation of the coal fields, but the brain"s resources are inexhaustible.
A German workman now comes along who has discovered a chemical subst.i.tute for coal, better than coal in many ways, and before this German shall have been dead many years some other will find a further subst.i.tute far better and cheaper than his.
There is endless heat power in the action of the tides, in the rush of Niagara, in the winds, and in endless chemical combinations. Heat is motion, and the Universe is motion. Men will soon cease lighting tiny bonfires to obtain crude heat in a crude way. Electricity or the sun"s own rays, concentrated for heating purposes, will do the work without any digging in mines by men, or delving in ashes and clinkers by women.
The story of antiquity, more or less fict.i.tious, of the burning of a fleet with the aid of a gla.s.s and the sunbeams, will be matter-of-fact reality long before the coal shall have been exhausted.
HOW THE OTHER PLANETS WILL TALK TO US
We talk of civilization as though it necessarily implied improvement.
Civilization means the school and the library, but it also means the prison and the poorhouse.
Two short stories ill.u.s.trate different views of what we call civilization:
Aristippus was a young Greek gentleman of large means, genuine intellectual power, a sense of humor and a reputation as a philosopher.
He was on his way to Corinth with a young lady named Lais, or possibly he was coming from Corinth with her. Anyhow, he was wrecked on the voyage. If you know anything about the reputation of Lais, you know that the philosopher was badly employed, and that the Greek G.o.ds doubtless wrecked his vessel to impress upon his mind the importance of morality.
Thrown ash.o.r.e on a barren stretch of sand, the philosopher was very sad at first. He observed on the sand the remains of certain geometrical drawings, and instantly exclaimed: "There is help near. Here I see signs of thinking men, of civilization."
Voltaire tells of wrecked individuals thrown on a lonely coast, and also much distressed and frightened.
They saw no geometrical tracings in the sand. But on a bleak moor in the twilight they saw the black beams of a gibbet, and below the cross-piece, swinging in the wind, they saw a human skeleton with bony wrists and ankles chained together.
Prayerfully the wanderers dropped on their knees and exclaimed with upturned eyes:
"Thank G.o.d, we have got back to civilization." ----
Thus, you see, there are varying signs of civilization. There is a great gulf between the signs perceived by Aristippus--signs of the mental activity which engages in geometrical demonstrations--and Voltaire"s sign of civilization--the brutal execution of a brutal criminal. ----
Those accustomed to waste time in speculations that cannot bring a financial return may be interested in the following application of the sign of civilization which Aristippus immediately recognized back in the days of two thousand years ago.
We know that some day the inhabitants on Mars or some other planet will want to talk to us. They have doubtless been studying us and consider us still too barbarous and primitive to be worth talking to.
But when we become semi-civilized, in the cosmic sense of the word, the older and wiser planets will get ready to open communication with us.
How will they go about it? They are perhaps absolutely different from us, in shape, in manner of thought, in every conceivable way, including language, customs, and so on.
BUT GEOMETRICAL, MATHEMATICAL FACTS ARE THE SAME THROUGHOUT THE UNIVERSE.
Will not the wise Martian who wants to speak to us and decides to flash some message down here on our clouds, or on the surface of the water, utilize the universality of geometrical truths in order to make us understand that thinking beings are trying to talk to us?
The sum of the angles of any triangle is equal to two right angles.
That is true of every triangle, no matter what its shape, no matter whether it be drawn on this earth or on the most distant sun.
Therefore, when the Martian gentleman gets ready to talk to us he need only repeatedly place before us two right angles followed by a triangle, or a triangle followed by two right angles.
Instantly, like Aristippus, we can say there is civilization in Mars, or wherever that sign comes from, or at least there is organized thought. The mind that is flashing that sign knows something about geometry.
Of course, we should also recognize "signs of civilization" if the Martians should project upon our atmosphere a skeleton hanging in chains. But it is to be hoped that the Martians have got beyond that particular evidence of civilization.