It seems to me that nothing in the whole problem of life is more important than a thorough realization of this undoubted truth--that the big fundamental feelings of man"s better nature are absolutely independent and apart from the working of his intellect, or any calculation of self-interest, conscious or implied, just as they are independent of his material appet.i.tes and instincts. A clear understanding of this truth will answer many of the questions which are so apt to confuse the reason and trouble the peace of mind of the average much instructed person.
If a scientific doubter asks us how we can be sure of this, we can answer without hesitation that the evidence of our own inner feelings is unmistakable proof of it. The only proof of a feeling is the feeling itself. We have it--we are conscious of it--it is, as far as we are concerned, and it is futile for any outsider to deny it.
If any one is so const.i.tuted that he cannot get the force of this, we may make the understanding of it easier by turning his attention to the feelings of man"s esthetic nature, which operate in a somewhat similar way. We have already had occasion to refer to them, but we may be permitted to do so again, with added emphasis. They are an ill.u.s.tration and a confirmation of the vitally important principle which we have just been stating.
If a setting sun, or a harmony, or musical notes, appeal to my sense of beauty and give rise to a vague but delicious emotion of my inner nature, all the arguments of all the intellects on earth are powerless to alter the essence and meaning of that feeling, so far as my nature is concerned. To me that feeling of beauty is a fact, and it would remain just as much a fact, even if no other person in the world shared it with me; and every other person in the world undertook to deny its existence.
The only proof I have of it, the only proof I need for it, is that I feel it.
Now when the intellect takes upon itself to meddle with such things, a learned professor may explain that a certain musical note is composed of vibrations--so many thousand per second--which are communicated to particles of matter in suspension in the air and carried by them to the tympanum of the ear, which acts thus-and-so upon the various components of the hearing apparatus, and finally arrives through a system of ganglia to a certain nerve centre, located somewhere in a brain cell, or the spinal column. He may use a great many other big words and display various kinds of scientific devices for measuring sound waves and calculating vibrations, but when he has finished, all his science will not enable him to compose a touching melody, or feel the beauty and inspiration of it. A little child, or a negro mammy, with a soul for music, will feel and give out something, whose very essence has nothing to do with the intellect and which the most formidable intellect is powerless to grasp.
The same thing is true of painting and poetry and sculpture. The feelings which inspire them and the feelings which they arouse in receptive souls are totally independent of the intellect.
The reason may argue that as one leg of the Venus de Milo is found by measurement to be considerably shorter than the other, it is absurd to call that a beautiful figure of a woman--or that it should excite as much admiration as a scientifically constructed statue in which all the proportions would be in accord with carefully tabulated statistics.
As a photograph of a young and healthy girl is more accurate and more pleasing in subject than a painting of an old woman, what reason is there for it to arouse less esthetic feeling than an immortal portrait by Rembrandt?
If a description of a small water course, drawn up by a surveyor and a lawyer, is exact and comprehensive, why should it not appeal to the imagination and sense of beauty more satisfactorily than a poem by Tennyson, ent.i.tled "The Brook?"
The obvious answer is that in all such questions the intellect is out of its element, trying to lay hands on something which has no tangible substance.
If this point-of-view is not enough to give your intellect food for thought and suggest its very decided limitations in the life of man, you may turn its light upon the simplest and most material sensations and feelings which belong to the animal nature and are common to all mankind.
What reason is there for my brother to dote on fried onions, while I cannot endure them? Why does my uncle like pig"s feet and eels and snails, while my wife is made almost ill at the sight of them? Your intellect may tell you that you ought to like the taste of castor oil, because it is good for you; but all the intellect in the world cannot make you like the taste of castor oil.
The taste, the savor, the feel of things--whether it be in the material world, or the esthetic world, or the spiritual world--is a part of life in which the intellect is forever condemned to remain an outsider. It may be very much interested in what is going on, it may reason with the causes and effects and characteristics of what it sees; it may make suggestions to the will-power and argue against the impulses which are prompted by the feelings; but it cannot prevent the feelings, or the impulses, from being there and having their say.
The life and say of the feelings mean much to the welfare of each individual. Let us suppose that the circ.u.mstances of my life were such that I could truthfully express myself as follows:
"I _feel_ well and strong; I _feel_ that I love my wife devotedly and my wife returns that love; I _feel_ immense affection for my children; I _feel_ I would make any and every sacrifice to protect them and my wife from harm; I _feel_ very hopeful about the future, both for my family and myself; I _feel_ I have done my best, in accordance with my ability; I have a feeling of loyalty to my friends and a feeling of honor in my dealings with my fellow men; I _feel_ content with my lot, in particular, and the way of the world, in general; and whether my life was evolved from a monkey and a protoplasm, or came into being as a divine and perfect conception, I _feel_ an abiding faith in an all-wise but mysterious purpose for everything."
There are no material considerations, or calculations of self-interest, or reasoning processes, in this kind of summary. It is made up exclusively of fundamental and spontaneous feelings which are in existence, to a greater or less extent, among all sorts and manners of individuals, in any known stage of civilization. A peasant living in a hut, in a vineyard in Sicily, is just as capable of having them, as a millionaire living in a city palace, or a scientist presiding over an academy of learning. A native Patagonian, or a Swede, or a Chinaman, may be just as susceptible to them as a French artist, or an American steel king. As they come from the inner nature, and as all men have an inner nature, it is possible for them to be experienced by all men.
There are, of course, countless other beautiful and inspired feelings that may come to life in the inner nature of an individual, but the few simple ones which we have suggested are sufficient for an ill.u.s.tration.
Now let us imagine, for a moment, another ill.u.s.tration. Let us imagine that a modern intellect, scientifically trained and enlightened, undertook to investigate, a.n.a.lyze, dissect, in a methodical and accurate way, the facts which gave rise to my feelings, or are implied by them, in an effort to determine the reason and reasonableness of such interesting phenomena.
I _feel_ well and strong. "But," says he, "that does not necessarily prove that you are well or strong. It may be merely an a.s.sumption founded on ignorance of scientific facts." The proper way to determine how well and strong I am is to have my health and strength tested and rated in an expert way. According to the report of such an expert, my state of health is only 63 per cent normal and my strength is less than 50 per cent of standard for my weight and age.
Strictly speaking, I am neither well _nor_ strong, and my feeling in that respect may be dismissed as unwarranted by the facts and consequently unreasonable.
"I _feel_ that I love my wife devotedly and that my wife returns that love."
"But," says the intellect, "those are only words. As a matter of fact, how severe and accurate a test have either of those devotions been submitted to? Have you ever been thrown into contact, alone and undisturbed, with a woman who is more beautiful and more appealing than your wife--who yearns for you and invites you with abandoned intensity?
Has your wife"s devotion been subjected to a corresponding test? Until that has been done, it is only reasonable to a.s.sume that there may be a good deal of exaggeration and self-delusion in the conclusions which you have arrived at. As there are certain prejudices and difficulties in the way of having these tests made, and as neither you nor your wife appear willing for the other to try them, any satisfactory estimate of your reciprocal devotions must remain in abeyance. Our statistics show, however, that in 87 per cent. of the cases where a mutual and unalterable devotion is supposed to exist, the determining factor on one side or the other, is the accidental absence of a sufficiently appealing opportunity. The evidence of the divorce courts offers a valuable source of information on this phase of the subject. Purely as a matter of averages, the conjecture may be hazarded that your a.s.sumption in this regard, as in the other, may be founded on a misconception."
In the same way, the intellect may introduce reasons and deductions in criticism of my hopes for my children, and the fallacies which may have crept into my theories of loyalty and honor and aspiration.
Finally, he might say: "Permit me to observe that you made a curious and somewhat amazing statement, just now, in reference to faith and an all-wise purpose. Is it possible that you are still under the influence of an out-grown mediaeval superst.i.tion? The only reasonable a.s.sumption with regard to man"s place in the universe has been quite clearly and scientifically established by the modern theory of evolution. It appears from that, that you and I are descended from an ape, which in turn is a second-cousin-once-removed, so to speak, of the bat, the spider, and the shark. We are all animals together, slowly pa.s.sing through different phases of evolution, and man owes his existence entirely to the accidental results of natural selection and survival of the fittest.
Man"s tribe happens to be more numerous than that of the elephant, or the whale, which are larger animals; but less numerous than that of the ant, which is almost his equal in intelligence and decidedly more industrious, though it is so much smaller than man. Millions of ants come into existence and go out of existence, every day, without making any appreciable difference in the gradual processes of evolution. The same thing may be said of man--or bats and whales. Surely it is high time that a well-educated person of the twentieth century should consider such things from a reasonable, scientific point-of-view."
When he has finished with this, if I am still in a receptive mood, he may condescend to explain to me that self-interest and enlightened reason supply the true and underlying motives for all conduct; and that this is the only conception of life which is susceptible of intelligent explanation.
As a matter of fact, although this ill.u.s.tration is entirely fanciful, I was given a book to read, the other day, a modern book on morals, in which this was the gist of the argument throughout--enlightened self-interest, or selfishness, as the only sound and sufficient motive for everything we do. The friend who gave it to me had accepted it as scientific and authoritative and was thoroughly in accord with its conclusions. I may add that this particular "friend," as far as I have been able to observe, is the quintessence of selfishness.
My purpose, in imagining these ill.u.s.trations, was to render obvious and palpable the limitations of the intellect, when it attempts to translate feelings into terms of reason, or when it attempts to subst.i.tute scientific calculations for spontaneous emotions. The essence of one is feeling; the essence of the other is logic; and the idea of replacing the former by the latter is about as incongruous as an attempt to paint the perfume of a violet with an adding machine.
In the heart and soul and even in the esthetic nature of every individual is that mysterious element, which goes back to the beginning of creation. In many of the finest and most important acts of man, it may supply either the determining cause, or the princ.i.p.al effect. It cannot be explained in terms of material self-interest, or enlightened reason, because its essence is neither material nor reasonable. It has in it a touch of the ideal and divine, which was implanted in man, or has evolved in man, in accordance with the all-wise intention.
When we have succeeded in arriving at a clear realization of this fundamental truth, and imagine we have put man"s intellect back in the place where it properly belongs, we must pause a moment to make equally clear that we must not under-estimate the wonder and importance of that same intellect, in the life of every individual and the life of mankind in general.
In this age of science, the attention and interest of the universe have been largely focussed on the marvellous achievements of the human intellect. Discoveries, inventions, advanced methods and great strides of progress in countless directions are the boast and pride of modern times. There is no disputing this, nor is there any doubt but that a great wave of scientific accomplishment, which was somewhat slow in developing, has, within the last two generations, suddenly a.s.sumed the most stupendous and bewildering proportions. The railroad and the automobile; the telephone and electric light; the airplane, phonograph, moving picture; anti-septic surgery and the germ theory of disease; the dreadnought, the submarine and wireless telegraphy;--these are but a few striking examples of the hundreds and thousands of achievements which the intellect has been able to accomplish in a comparatively short s.p.a.ce of time.
No wonder that we hear and read on all sides such constant and confident reference to the "advancement of science," the "progress of humanity,"
and the bewildering resourcefulness of man"s brain.
All those achievements are objective and impersonal; they concern the comforts and welfare, of each and every one of us, to a greater or less extent, but in a purely material and general way.
When we turn to the personal life of the individual and consider his acts and motives, subjectively, we find that the role played by the intellect is almost equally important.
As we have seen in our previous discussions, the intellect has a say in nearly everything we do or think of doing. It enquires into the cause, and considers the effect, and pa.s.ses judgment, for or against, in accordance with the dictates of its reason. If a certain instinct within us, which may be purely animal, has a need for food or water, the intellect recognizes and approves the need; but if the food and water set before us is poisonous or unfit, it is the intellect which determines that and overrules the instinct. If another instinct, or impulse, prompts us to set fire to a house, or jump out of a window, the intellect decides that such an act would be unreasonable and forbids us to do so.
It frequently happens that two or more of our instincts, inclinations, desires, are opposed to each other. I want to eat my apple now; I want to keep it to eat at the ball-game; and I want to trade it for Tim"s lignum-vitae top. In such a case, it is the intellect which considers the advantages and disadvantages of each and announces its decision. If it is a healthy intellect, in good control, it will enforce its decision, too; but even if it isn"t, and an unruly impulse proves too strong to be denied, that won"t prevent the intellect from pointing out the mistake that is being made and keeping it in memory for future reference.
It is not necessary to go over all this ground again. We have already examined it with sufficient care in connection with the first answer which we gave to the up-to-date youth who wanted to know why he shouldn"t follow his every inclination. The various examples which we cited to ill.u.s.trate the significance of reason and experience are enough to establish the point we are now making.
As far as the material things of this world are concerned, and the material needs of the individual, the intellect is generally and properly acknowledged as the sovereign master. The rule of reason in private life; and the rule of science in civilization have become more and more the accepted standards of the world in which we live.
If an instinct or a desire is unreasonable, it should not be allowed to prevail; if a tradition or a convention of the past is unscientific, it should be discarded and ridiculed as something out-of-date. That is the conclusion which advanced intellects have reached through scientific methods of enlightenment; it is the message they have been communicating, the example which they have been setting, until the wide-spread results are becoming increasingly apparent among all cla.s.ses and in nearly all places, where modern science and civilization have penetrated.
It ought not to be very difficult for any one to recognize and understand why the methods of science and the rule of reason occupy such a dominant place in public estimation as they undoubtedly do to-day. The only natural question is why they have not always, in by-gone generations, occupied just as high a place. The answer to this question is very simple, though some people"s attention may not have been called to it. The scientific method of investigation, as we know it to-day, is a comparatively recent product of the human intellect. There was no science of any such kind when Homer wrote the Iliad, or when the Christian religion was founded, or when Leonardo da Vinci painted the Mona Lisa and Shakespeare wrote his masterpieces. Even at the time our great American republic was put into operation, modern science was still in its swaddling clothes. It is only in the last two generations that it may be said to have reached its true form and begun turning out in rapid succession the mult.i.tude of discoveries and inventions which have had such an immense effect in the daily life of civilization.
It also takes a certain amount of time for great changes to permeate, and become absorbed by ma.s.ses of people, so that it should not seem strange if many of the indirect results have only begun to be noticeable within the past few years.
And now if we look about and pause to reflect on these triumphs of modern science, as they affect the life and ideas and feelings of the average individual, a very curious and somewhat startling question is liable to suggest itself.
Is it possible that right here may be the main and underlying cause of the so-called "demoralization" of the present generation? Is it possible that the "impossible notions" and the equally "impossible conduct" of the up-to-date young people which grandmother finds so shocking are traceable to this source? Is it possible that faith, honor, loyalty and other ideals and aspirations of man"s better nature, are being neglected and corrupted by the methods of modern science and the rule of reason?
The very idea of such a possibility, when it first dawned upon me, seemed like such a palpable absurdity that I put it aside, yet as I followed the other trains of thought which have been under discussion, this idea kept recurring with greater and greater persistency. If it happened to be true, the lesson to be derived from it might prove so important and helpful to struggling humanity, that it appears to me, now, ent.i.tled to careful consideration.
Let us begin with a general commentary and ask ourselves--How comes it, while scientific methods have achieved such amazing results in the material world, they have not succeeded equally well in improving the inner nature of man? How comes it that science, with all its investigations and accurately reasoned conclusions, cannot show the individuals of the present day how to make better paintings than Raphael or t.i.tian? Or better statues than Michael Angelo? Or better music than Chopin or Wagner? Or better literature than Moliere or Shakespeare?
It can show him how to make a hundred times better ship, or factory, or surgical operation; but when it comes to this other kind of thing, it appears to have made no improvement at all. Those artists we have named and hundreds of others in past centuries, who made immortal masterpieces, had no intellects enlightened by modern science, nor any of the benefits of modern education and progress. If we may judge at all by results (which is the modern, enlightened way), the only effect of science in teaching people how to get an inspiration and find a beautiful expression for it, has been a detriment rather than a help.
If you take a boy to-day, who has a natural bent for poetry, or painting, how much will you help him by filling his mind with scientific methods and theories, rules and exceptions, deductions and compilations, of the various elements which should logically determine the value of the finished product? By giving his intellect a thorough course in scientific training, which may occupy his time and absorb his energy for many years, is it not possible that you will turn out in the end a plodding hack, instead of the inspired artist who might have been?
Did anybody ever feel the poetic beauty of a rose with greater intensity for having examined its petals through a microscope, and learned to cla.s.sify it scientifically, both as to species and variety?
Did anybody ever learn by scientific rules of grammar and cla.s.sified tables of words, to speak a foreign language with the ease and charm of a child, who picks it up from a stupid governess in one-tenth the time?
The childlike, natural way to learn a language is to absorb it into the system, almost without effort, until it becomes a part of second nature--in much the same way that we absorb tunes. Without the slightest conscious effort, we are absorbing and retaining countless bars of music, all through our lives--yet can anybody imagine an enlightened intellect, undertaking to a.n.a.lyze and cla.s.sify with scientific method the use of sharps and flats in different kinds of bars, and attempting to learn them in that form?