Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things
pieces... These teachings confess the existing imperfection of human
nature; and they contain obvious truth. But those who first proclaimed
that truth, thousands and thousands of years ago, never imagined a form
of social existence in which selfishness would be _naturally_
impossible. It remained for irreligious Nature to furnish us with proof
positive that there can exist a society in which the pleasure of active
beneficence makes needless the idea of duty,—a society in which
instinctive morality can dispense with ethical codes of every sort,—a
society of which every member is born so absolutely unselfish, and so
energetically good, that moral training could signify, even for its
youngest, neither more nor less than waste of precious time.
To the Evolutionist such facts necessarily suggest that the value of
our moral idealism is but temporary; and that something better than
virtue, better than kindness, better than self-denial,—in the present
human meaning of those terms,—might, under certain conditions,
eventually replace them. He finds himself obliged to face the question
whether a world without moral notions might not be morally better than
a world in which conduct is regulated by such notions. He must even ask
himself whether the existence of religious commandments, moral laws,
and ethical standards among ourselves does not prove us still in a very
primitive stage of social evolution. And these questions naturally lead
up to another: Will humanity ever be able, on this planet, to reach an
ethical condition beyond all its ideals,—a condition in which
everything that we now call evil will have been atrophied out of
existence, and everything that we call virtue have been transmuted into
instinct;—a state of altruism in which ethical concepts and codes will
have become as useless as they would be, even now, in the societies of
the higher ants.
The giants of modern thought have given some attention to this
question; and the greatest among them has answered it—partly in the
affirmative. Herbert Spencer has expressed his belief that humanity
will arrive at some state of civilization ethically comparable with
that of the ant:—
“If we have, in lower orders of creatures, cases in which the nature is
constitutionally so modified that altruistic activities have become one
with egoistic activities, there is an irresistible implication that a
parallel identification will, under parallel conditions, take place
among human beings. Social insects furnish us with instances completely
to the point,—and instances showing us, indeed, to what a marvelous
degree the life of the individual may be absorbed in subserving the
lives of other individuals... Neither the ant nor the bee can be
supposed to have a sense of duty, in the acceptation we give to that
word; nor can it be supposed that it is continually undergoing
self-sacrifice, in the ordinary acceptation of that word... [The facts]
show us that it is within the possibilities of organization to produce
a nature which shall be just as energetic in the pursuit of altruistic
ends, as is in other cases shown in the pursuit of egoistic ends;—and
they show that, in such cases, these altruistic ends are pursued in
pursuing ends which, on their other face, are egoistic. For the
satisfaction of the needs of the organization, these actions, conducive
to the welfare of others, _must_ be carried on...
“So far from its being true that there must go on, throughout all the
future, a condition in which self-regard is to be continually subjected
by the regard for others, it will, contrari-wise, be the case that a
regard for others will eventually become so large a source of pleasure
as to overgrow the pleasure which is derivable from direct egoistic
gratification... Eventually, then, there will come also a state in
which egoism and altruism are so conciliated that the one merges in the
other.”
VI
Of course the foregoing prediction does not imply that human nature
will ever undergo such physiological change as would be represented by
structural specializations comparable to those by which the various
castes of insect societies are differentiated. We are not bidden to
imagine a future state of humanity in which the active majority would
consist of semi-female workers and Amazons toiling for an inactive
minority of selected Mothers. Even in his chapter, “Human Population in
the Future,” Mr. Spencer has attempted no detailed statement of the
physical modifications inevitable to the production of higher moral
types,—though his general statement in regard to a perfected nervous
system, and a great diminution of human fertility, suggests that such
moral evolution would signify a very considerable amount of physical
change. If it be legitimate to believe in a future humanity to which
the pleasure of mutual beneficence will represent the whole joy of
life, would it not also be legitimate to imagine other transformations,
physical and moral, which the facts of insect-biology have proved to be
within the range of evolutional possibility?... I do not know. I most
worshipfully reverence Herbert Spencer as the greatest philosopher who
has yet appeared in this world; and I should be very sorry to write
down anything contrary to his teaching, in such wise that the reader
could imagine it to have been inspired by Synthetic Philosophy. For the
ensuing reflections, I alone am responsible; and if I err, let the sin
be upon my own head.
I suppose that the moral transformations predicted by Mr. Spencer,
could be effected only with the aid of physiological change, and at a
terrible cost. Those ethical conditions manifested by insect-societies
can have been reached only through effort desperately sustained for
millions of years against the most atrocious necessities. Necessities
equally merciless may have to be met and mastered eventually by the
human race. Mr. Spencer has shown that the time of the greatest
possible human suffering is yet to come, and that it will be
concomitant with the period of the greatest possible pressure of
population. Among other results of that long stress, I understand that
there will be a vast increase in human intelligence and sympathy; and
that this increase of intelligence will be effected at the cost of
human fertility. But this decline in reproductive power will not, we
are told, be sufficient to assure the very highest of social
conditions: it will only relieve that pressure of population which has
been the main cause of human suffering. The state of perfect social
equilibrium will be approached, but never quite reached, by mankind—
_Unless there be discovered some means of solving economic problems,
just as social insects have solved them, by the suppression of
sex-life_.
Supposing that such a discovery were made, and that the human race
should decide to arrest the development of sex in the majority of its
young,—so as to effect a transferrence of those forces, now demanded by
sex-life to the development of higher activities,—might not the result
be an eventual state of polymorphism, like that of ants? And, in such
event, might not the Coming Race be indeed represented in its higher
types,—through feminine rather than masculine evolution,—by a majority
of beings of neither sex?
Considering how many persons, even now, through merely unselfish (not
to speak of religious) motives, sentence themselves to celibacy, it
should not appear improbable that a more highly evolved humanity would
cheerfully sacrifice a large proportion of its sex-life for the common
weal, particularly in view of certain advantages to be gained. Not the
least of such advantages—always supposing that mankind were able to
control sex-life after the natural manner of the ants—would be a
prodigious increase of longevity. The higher types of a humanity
superior to sex might be able to realize the dream of life for a
thousand years.
Already we find lives too short for the work we have to do; and with
the constantly accelerating progress of discovery, and the
never-ceasing expansion of knowledge, we shall certainly find more and
more reason to regret, as time goes on, the brevity of existence. That
Science will ever discover the Elixir of the Alchemists’ hope is
extremely unlikely. The Cosmic Powers will not allow us to cheat them.
For every advantage which they yield us the full price must be paid:
nothing for nothing is the everlasting law. Perhaps the price of long
life will prove to be the price that the ants have paid for it.
Perhaps, upon some elder planet, that price has already been paid, and
the power to produce offspring restricted to a caste morphologically
differentiated, in unimaginable ways, from the rest of the species...
VII
But while the facts of insect-biology suggest so much in regard to the
future course of human evolution, do they not also suggest something of
largest significance concerning the relation of ethics to cosmic law?
Apparently, the highest evolution will not be permitted to creatures
capable of what human moral experience has in all areas condemned.
Apparently, the highest possible strength is the strength of
unselfishness; and power supreme never will be accorded to cruelty or
to lust. There may be no gods; but the forces that shape and dissolve
all forms of being would seem to be much more exacting than gods. To
prove a “dramatic tendency” in the ways of the stars is not possible;
but the cosmic process seems nevertheless to affirm the worth of every
human system of ethics fundamentally opposed to human egoism.
Notes
THE STORY OF MIMI-NASHI-HŌÏCHI
[1] See my _Kottō_, for a description of these curious crabs.
[2] Or, Shimonoséki. The town is also known by the name of Bakkan.
[3] The _biwa_, a kind of four-stringed lute, is chiefly used in
musical recitative. Formerly the professional minstrels who recited
the _Heiké-Monogatari_, and other tragical histories, were called
_biwa-hōshi_, or “lute-priests.” The origin of this appellation is not
clear; but it is possible that it may have been suggested by the fact
that “lute-priests” as well as blind shampooers, had their heads
shaven, like Buddhist priests. The _biwa_ is played with a kind of
plectrum, called _bachi_, usually made of horn.
(1) A response to show that one has heard and is listening attentively.
[4] A respectful term, signifying the opening of a gate. It was used
by samurai when calling to the guards on duty at a lord’s gate for
admission.
[5] Or the phrase might be rendered, “for the pity of that part is the
deepest.” The Japanese word for pity in the original text is
“_awaré_.”
[6] “Traveling incognito” is at least the meaning of the original
phrase,—“making a disguised august-journey” (_shinobi no go-ryokō_).
[7] The Smaller Pragña-Pâramitâ-Hridaya-Sûtra is thus called in
Japanese. Both the smaller and larger sûtras called Pragña-Pâramitâ
(“Transcendent Wisdom”) have been translated by the late Professor Max
Müller, and can be found in volume xlix. of the _Sacred Books of the
East_ (“Buddhist Mahayana Sûtras”).—Apropos of the magical use of the
text, as described in this story, it is worth remarking that the
subject of the sûtra is the Doctrine of the Emptiness of Forms,—that
is to say, of the unreal character of all phenomena or noumena...
“Form is emptiness; and emptiness is form. Emptiness is not different
from form; form is not different from emptiness. What is form—that is
emptiness. What is emptiness—that is form... Perception, name,
concept, and knowledge, are also emptiness... There is no eye, ear,
nose, tongue, body, and mind... But when the envelopment of
consciousness has been annihilated, then he [_the seeker_] becomes
free from all fear, and beyond the reach of change, enjoying final