Why Born--Whither Bound

Evening Star, Issue 20020, 10 November 1928, Page 11

Why Born--Whither Bound

The Sealed Book Puny Man in Vast Universe Xu a, brilliant but gloomy article in tho ‘ Sunday Chronicle,’ Professor Charles llichot, a noted psychologist and Nobel prize winner, stresses (as in a famous passage did Balfour) tho powerlessness of puny man in a vast universe.

Novelists have written fanciful _ romances in which men are hurled into space in huge projectiles fired from powerful machines, and, passing beyond the zone of the earth’s atraction. they reach tho moon or one of the planets of the solar world.

Whatever we may invent, however, we shall remain fixed for all time, we and our children after us, on this paltry mass of gas, stones, and mud which is our planet. As for the worlds other than those which travel round the sun, our inability to reach them is only too evident. Even supposing that some skilful inventor of the future may be able to give the speed of light to his imaginary projectile, which is wildly improbable, a child hurled across space inside it would bo an old man before he had accomplished the tenth part of that appalling journey. There is something dismal in the thought of this inevitable isolation in boundless space. Without doubt countless millions of beings more or less like ourselves are evolving in those other worlds of tho infinite universe, but we shall never know them. What is the point of racking our brains over the problem of their existence, since they can’t intervene in our lives any more than we can in theirs?

Man is an extraordinarily helpless individual. Despite all the thousands of years he lias been on tho earth he is still pitifully impotent. Let tho earth to-morrow collide with some mass of matter wandering in tlie solar world—a most unlikely contingency, hy the way—or let some comet in his course envelop us in poisonous gas, and it would be all up

with the human race. Wo aro defenceless against such cataclysms, It is not likely that they will ever occur; it is still less likely that wo should he able to foresee them; but it is absolutely certain that wo shall bo powerless to prevent them. HELPLESS AGAINST NATURE. In the immense universe the whole human race ig but an imperceptible atom, and, to make things worse, each human person is only an insignificant fragment of this tiny human race. Each human individuality is all the time downtrodden, stifled, crushed under foot, submerged. It is lost in the tremendous crowd of kindred yet hostile individualities. Even if they band themselves together, these two thousand millions of men are utterly helpless against the great forces of Nature. Their collective impotence is profound. What, then, must be their individual helplessness? Undeniably there aro too many men in tho world, and they pass away too fast. In spite of all his pretentions the individual is only a tiny fraction of the tiny human race. Yet so incurable is our pride that our poor ego seems to each one of us like a cristallographio centre round which the whole world of men revolves. WHENCE? WHITHER?— No doubt if there were fewer men on this planet tho individual would not see his personal influence annihilated by millions of others like unto himself. His fancy would have full play. He would fear neither rivals nor enemies; ho would not bo paralysed by the appalling competition of modern life, which fetters him on every hand—-which hampers Wm at every turn. _ Bub, on the other hand, if he wore all by himself what could he do? Tho answer is easy. Just nothing. As soon as we attempt to plumb the depths of our intellectual impotence we stand aghast before it. First of all we aro confronted by two tierce and mocking sphinxes, two fundamental questions, which ought, above all else, to excite our passionate, our anguished interest. Whence come we? Whither are we bound?

The most learned researches and the profoundest mediations of men, since men have been, have brought forth nothing but twaddle on these two essential points, with statements and denials at once ridiculous and arrogant. We know beyond all doubt rhat a new-born child is derived from a couple of human beings. We know with equal certainty that a male coll, penetrating the female cell, will fertilise it, with the result that the little ovular speck will become an enibryon, then a foetus, then a man. —AND WHY? Perhaps wo shall even succeed in describing those successive changes in astonishing detail, but as for understanding the immediate cause—there we come to a full stop! _ ' What we ought to know is not how the fertilisation takes place, but why? Why do men exist? Why are there living beings? To what end all this production of thinking machines? What is the purpose of it all? We are in total darkness. . . not the faintest glimmer, not the most flickering gleam of light. All about us are countless phenomena, movements, vibrations, appearances, of which we sometimes dimly perceive the workings, but their profound causes are so shrouded in mystery that they escape us altogether. And yet we must seek to go beyond that. Wo did not ask to bo scattered over this little globo of earth, yet not only have we been set down upon it, but what is more we have been animated, puny helpless insects that we arc, by immense and confused desires, destined to remain eternally unsatisfied. Somebody will eventually demonstrate the mathematical relations of gravity, light, heat, and electricity, but all to no purpose, for the same dread problem will always confront us—what are we here for? Since I exist, since I think, since I suffer, I have certainly the right to ask the reason of my existence, my thought, my suffering! What is required of me? Why this oxygen? Why these mountains and these seas? Why this sun? these stars? Why life? Why death? Why anything? Who gave me thought? and to what purpose? What was the good of dragging me forth from’ the shadows where I lay sleeping? Must 1 always go on my way, knowing neither the cause nor the object of my journey ? What fantastic being has breathed into me consciousness, desires, aspirations, thoughts? Why do I pass from infancy to old age through a thousand griefs, a thousand agonies, without discovering the reason for this headlong career ?

"BACK TO THE VOID," We came from the void: that is very .prpbable, certain indeed. But where are wo bound ?• . Th)o answer' to this, too, is almost certainly " Back to the void! ” Wo have not even the poor comfort of partial initiation into the mystery of the material phenomena surrounding us. Each time that wo seek to plumb the depths we dash our heads against the brazen walls of the unknowable and the incomprehensible.

The basis of biology is the fertilisation and development of beings. Wo can actually see the fertilised colls multiplying and changing. What is the significance of this _ marvellous potentiality of growth, hidden in tlm ultra-microscopic seeds of the female'cell and awaiting the help of the male cell to set it free—a potentiality so amazing that these little seeds will eventually become now an oak, now an elephant, now a Michael Angelo! We are always confronted by onr appalling incapacity to enter into the thought of our fellow-men. 2 By analogy, by probability, and above all because it is more convenient, we assume that every other man’s mental mechanism is just like our own; but the movements of our neighbour’s soul are inscrutable, and everything therein is obscure to us, incomplete and uncertain.

SEALED BOOKS OF THOUGHT. The consciousness of others remains obstinately closed to ours. Mother and daughter, lover and mistress, brother and sister, friend and friend never really know each other. In each man’s brain seethes a world of thoughts which is a sealed book to our poor thought. We know nothing ul any human' soul but our own, and our soul is isolated from all others, whatever lovers, mothers, and poets m» v say about it.

Do we hope for the progress of intelligence? Optimists declare that the human intelligence will perhaps go on growing; that future ages will see a race of marvellously clover men, that some daj men will be born as far above the men of to-day in intellect as a member of the Institute is above a kangaroo or a rhinoceros.

These are very beautiful hopes, but they hardly seem warranted by facts. Twenty-five centuries ago there was a towii peopled by ID.UUO free citizens (10,000 women, 10,000 slaves, and 10,000 foreigners). In a single century this little town produced Phidias, Praxiteles, Myron, Socrates, Plato, Zenophon, Thucydides, Pericles, Euclid, Thales, Archimedes, yEschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, and Aristophanes, which is tantamount to saying that it produced the finest geniuses that have over shone upon the world. If to-day wo considered the erninnent men born in the course of a century in a modern town of the _same population could we furnish a .list to bo compared with that? The bare idea is matter for laughter, or perhaps for tears. Since that splendid flowering of intellect in Athens the intelligence of men does not seem to have improved. Lump together all the inhabitants of London, Paris. New York, Berlin, Rome, Pekin, Calcutta.' Constantinople, and Buenos Aires, and you will have a thousand times more human intellects than ever there were in Athens. Then reckon up how many there are who can innk wioii Socrates, Plato, Pericles, or .-Eschylus in all those town put- together irom 1*27 to 1927.

For the future of the nunian race I should very much like to believe that the intelligence of mankind is soaring upward, but I am not even sure that | we shall preserve the little share that 1 wt» now possess The intellectual impotence ■ f man is ! aggravated by an equal degree of arro- | ganco. Not only can he understand notTiing, hut ho imagines that he has understood everything. WHAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN. In pito of the feebleness of our intellect what miracles might not science have made practicable had she devoted to the search for truth a thousandth part of the treasures so prodigally spent in the,destruction of the fruits of man’s intelligence! The Great War of 1914-1918 cost millions- upon millions of pounds. With the hundredth part of that sum vve could have stamped out drunkenness, syphilis, and tuberculosis, built a network or railways in the colonies, and opened up vast regions for trade and agriculture. But we preferred to massacre millions of young men, to lay waste the fields, to destroy factories, to burn down libraries, to sow hatred broadcast, and to belch forth abuse. Forty passengers embark on a cruise lasting a fevy days. They aro not already acquainted, but little by little they enter into conversation. First, bows are exchanged, then a few words, and then longer talks. By the end of the week jealousies, criticisms, and taunts are let loose. They only had to know each other to become enemies. GODDESS OF DISCORD. If men wanted to erect a temple to the Deity they worship it would he dedicated to Discord, discord between brothers, between fellow-citizens, between man and wife, between peoples, between corporations; discord in acadmids, drawing rooms, taverns, workshops, cottages; and the temple would have to be large enough to, --tretch from Gibraltar and Archangel if all the votaries of that sinister goddess sought to enter on the day of her (estival. On every hand wo find these incoherences and contradictions —in a word, impotence The real hardship lies in the fact that the will has no power over the body, which evolves without the soul being able to influence its term or its mutations. The soul is constrained to accept everything in silence. As soon as the female cell has been fertilised by the male the organisation of the future being is definitely do cided. It will ho n man ur a woman, tall or short, dark or fair-haired, with a tip-tilted nose or a snub, a fair skin or an olive complexion. The soul of this hapless creature will be powerless to modify anything of all the morphologies contained in the gem. FATE DECREES. It the height is to be just over 4ft the soul will bp forced to inhabit a dwarfish body, and she will have no other means of increasing her bodily stature but to wear very high heels. If the ears arc large and stick out the soul will have tq put up with it. It is all decided by destiny, and cannot be altered. There is no appeal against the decrees of Fate. What the procreated child be no man can foresee. Will be be God or devil ?

Vainly the parents dream golden dreams! They asked for an Antinous —they get an abortion 1 They wanted a genius—the child is an imbecile. Our will has no more effect on the physical and moral character of our "hildreu than on the speed of our digestion and the amount of oxygen absorbed into the tissues. Everything is decided by Fate, A few minutes after fertilisation the egg will evolve with a pro-destined rhythm till the extreme old ago of the person

it is going to bo, nor will external events have any power to alter tendencies or instincts. BEWILDERED PARENTHOOD. The child is not a blank page on which the parents can write what they please. They are compelled to look on aa, mere spectators at the growth of opinions that surprise them. Just as the hen who has hatched out ducklings flutters about desperately on the bank at the sight of her brood plunging into the water, so tlje father, seeing in his children the growth ot passions unknown to him, is ' brown into bewildered consternation. Often, indeed, an intellectual rebellion takes place, and a covert, long-drawn-out, and dramatic conflict develops. Wo are as powerless to mould the moral character of our children as we were at the moment of procreation to fashion their phvsical form All the soul’s servility is summed up in one brief sentence, which tolls like a death knell at our every step forward into time without rest or remission: the soul ago* as the body grows old.