What Is Man? and Other Essays
that an ant knows every individual in her hive of five hundred thousand
souls. Also, after a year’s absence one of the five hundred thousand
she will straightway recognize the returned absentee and grace the
recognition with an affectionate welcome. How are these recognitions
made? Not by color, for painted ants were recognized. Not by smell, for
ants that had been dipped in chloroform were recognized. Not by speech
and not by antennae signs nor contacts, for the drunken and motionless
ants were recognized and the friend discriminated from the stranger.
The ants were all of the same species, therefore the friends had to be
recognized by form and feature—friends who formed part of a hive of
five hundred thousand! Has any man a memory for form and feature
approaching that?
Y.M. Certainly not.
O.M. Franklin’s ants and Lubbuck’s ants show fine capacities of putting
this and that together in new and untried emergencies and deducting
smart conclusions from the combinations—a man’s mental process exactly.
With memory to help, man preserves his observations and reasonings,
reflects upon them, adds to them, recombines, and so proceeds, stage by
stage, to far results—from the teakettle to the ocean greyhound’s
complex engine; from personal labor to slave labor; from wigwam to
palace; from the capricious chase to agriculture and stored food; from
nomadic life to stable government and concentrated authority; from
incoherent hordes to massed armies. The ant has observation, the
reasoning faculty, and the preserving adjunct of a prodigious memory;
she has duplicated man’s development and the essential features of his
civilization, and you call it all instinct!
Y.M. Perhaps I lacked the reasoning faculty myself.
O.M. Well, don’t tell anybody, and don’t do it again.
Y.M. We have come a good way. As a result—as I understand it—I am
required to concede that there is absolutely no intellectual frontier
separating Man and the Unrevealed Creatures?
O.M. That is what you are required to concede. There is no such
frontier—there is no way to get around that. Man has a finer and more
capable machine in him than those others, but it is the same machine
and works in the same way. And neither he nor those others can command
the machine—it is strictly automatic, independent of control, works
when it pleases, and when it doesn’t please, it can’t be forced.
Y.M. Then man and the other animals are all alike, as to mental
machinery, and there isn’t any difference of any stupendous magnitude
between them, except in quality, not in kind.
O.M. That is about the state of it—intellectuality. There are
pronounced limitations on both sides. We can’t learn to understand much
of their language, but the dog, the elephant, etc., learn to understand
a very great deal of ours. To that extent they are our superiors. On
the other hand, they can’t learn reading, writing, etc., nor any of our
fine and high things, and there we have a large advantage over them.
Y.M. Very well, let them have what they’ve got, and welcome; there is
still a wall, and a lofty one. They haven’t got the Moral Sense; we
have it, and it lifts us immeasurably above them.
O.M. What makes you think that?
Y.M. Now look here—let’s call a halt. I have stood the other infamies
and insanities and that is enough; I am not going to have man and the
other animals put on the same level morally.
O.M. I wasn’t going to hoist man up to that.
Y.M. This is too much! I think it is not right to jest about such
things.
O.M. I am not jesting, I am merely reflecting a plain and simple
truth—and without uncharitableness. The fact that man knows right from
wrong proves his _intellectual _superiority to the other creatures; but
the fact that he can _do _wrong proves his _moral _inferiority to any
creature that _cannot_. It is my belief that this position is not
assailable.
_Free Will_
Y.M. What is your opinion regarding Free Will?
O.M. That there is no such thing. Did the man possess it who gave the
old woman his last shilling and trudged home in the storm?
Y.M. He had the choice between succoring the old woman and leaving her
to suffer. Isn’t it so?
O.M. Yes, there was a choice to be made, between bodily comfort on the
one hand and the comfort of the spirit on the other. The body made a
strong appeal, of course—the body would be quite sure to do that; the
spirit made a counter appeal. A choice had to be made between the two
appeals, and was made. Who or what determined that choice?
Y.M. Any one but you would say that the man determined it, and that in
doing it he exercised Free Will.
O.M. We are constantly assured that every man is endowed with Free
Will, and that he can and must exercise it where he is offered a choice
between good conduct and less-good conduct. Yet we clearly saw that in
that man’s case he really had no Free Will: his temperament, his
training, and the daily influences which had molded him and made him
what he was, _compelled _him to rescue the old woman and thus save
_himself _—save himself from spiritual pain, from unendurable
wretchedness. He did not make the choice, it was made _for _him by
forces which he could not control. Free Will has always existed in
_words_, but it stops there, I think—stops short of _fact_. I would not
use those words—Free Will—but others.
Y.M. What others?
O.M. Free Choice.
Y.M. What is the difference?
O.M. The one implies untrammeled power to _act _as you please, the
other implies nothing beyond a mere _mental process: _the critical
ability to determine which of two things is nearest right and just.
Y.M. Make the difference clear, please.
O.M. The mind can freely _select, choose, point out _the right and just
one—its function stops there. It can go no further in the matter. It
has no authority to say that the right one shall be acted upon and the
wrong one discarded. That authority is in other hands.
Y.M. The man’s?
O.M. In the machine which stands for him. In his born disposition and
the character which has been built around it by training and
environment.
Y.M. It will act upon the right one of the two?
O.M. It will do as it pleases in the matter. George Washington’s
machine would act upon the right one; Pizarro would act upon the wrong
one.
Y.M. Then as I understand it a bad man’s mental machinery calmly and
judicially points out which of two things is right and just—
O.M. Yes, and his _moral _machinery will freely act upon the one or the
other, according to its make, and be quite indifferent to the _mind’s
_feeling concerning the matter—that is, _would _be, if the mind had any
feelings; which it hasn’t. It is merely a thermometer: it registers the
heat and the cold, and cares not a farthing about either.
Y.M. Then we must not claim that if a man _knows _which of two things
is right he is absolutely _bound _to do that thing?
O.M. His temperament and training will decide what he shall do, and he
will do it; he cannot help himself, he has no authority over the
matter. Wasn’t it right for David to go out and slay Goliath?
Y.M. Yes.
O.M. Then it would have been equally _right _for any one else to do it?
Y.M. Certainly.
O.M. Then it would have been _right _for a born coward to attempt it?
Y.M. It would—yes.
O.M. You know that no born coward ever would have attempted it, don’t
you?
Y.M. Yes.
O.M. You know that a born coward’s make and temperament would be an
absolute and insurmountable bar to his ever essaying such a thing,
don’t you?
Y.M. Yes, I know it.
O.M. He clearly perceives that it would be _right _to try it?
Y.M. Yes.
O.M. His mind has Free Choice in determining that it would be _right
_to try it?
Y.M. Yes.
O.M. Then if by reason of his inborn cowardice he simply can _not
_essay it, what becomes of his Free Will? Where is his Free Will? Why
claim that he has Free Will when the plain facts show that he hasn’t?
Why contend that because he and David _see _the right alike, both must
_act _alike? Why impose the same laws upon goat and lion?
Y.M. There is really no such thing as Free Will?
O.M. It is what I think. There is _will_. But it has nothing to do with
_intellectual perceptions of right and wrong, _and is not under their
command. David’s temperament and training had Will, and it was a
compulsory force; David had to obey its decrees, he had no choice. The
coward’s temperament and training possess Will, and _it _is compulsory;
it commands him to avoid danger, and he obeys, he has no choice. But
neither the Davids nor the cowards possess Free Will—will that may do
the right or do the wrong, as their _mental _verdict shall decide.
_Not Two Values, But Only One_
Y.M. There is one thing which bothers me: I can’t tell where you draw
the line between _material _covetousness and _spiritual _covetousness.
O.M. I don’t draw any.
Y.M. How do you mean?
O.M. There is no such thing as _material _covetousness. All
covetousness is spiritual.
Y.M. _All _longings, desires, ambitions _spiritual, _never material?
O.M. Yes. The Master in you requires that in _all _cases you shall
content his _spirit _—that alone. He never requires anything else, he
never interests himself in any other matter.
Y.M. Ah, come! When he covets somebody’s money—isn’t that rather
distinctly material and gross?
O.M. No. The money is merely a symbol—it represents in visible and
concrete form a _spiritual desire. _Any so-called material thing that
you want is merely a symbol: you want it not for _itself_, but because
it will content your spirit for the moment.
Y.M. Please particularize.
O.M. Very well. Maybe the thing longed for is a new hat. You get it and
your vanity is pleased, your spirit contented. Suppose your friends
deride the hat, make fun of it: at once it loses its value; you are
ashamed of it, you put it out of your sight, you never want to see it
again.
Y.M. I think I see. Go on.
O.M. It is the same hat, isn’t it? It is in no way altered. But it
wasn’t the _hat _you wanted, but only what it stood for—a something to
please and content your _spirit_. When it failed of that, the whole of
its value was gone. There are no _material _values; there are only
spiritual ones. You will hunt in vain for a material value that is
_actual, real—_there is no such thing. The only value it possesses, for
even a moment, is the spiritual value back of it: remove that end and
it is at once worthless—like the hat.
Y.M. Can you extend that to money?
O.M. Yes. It is merely a symbol, it has no _material _value; you think
you desire it for its own sake, but it is not so. You desire it for the
spiritual content it will bring; if it fail of that, you discover that
its value is gone. There is that pathetic tale of the man who labored
like a slave, unresting, unsatisfied, until he had accumulated a
fortune, and was happy over it, jubilant about it; then in a single
week a pestilence swept away all whom he held dear and left him
desolate. His money’s value was gone. He realized that his joy in it
came not from the money itself, but from the spiritual contentment he
got out of his family’s enjoyment of the pleasures and delights it
lavished upon them. Money has no _material _value; if you remove its
spiritual value nothing is left but dross. It is so with all things,
little or big, majestic or trivial—there are no exceptions. Crowns,
scepters, pennies, paste jewels, village notoriety, world-wide
fame—they are all the same, they have no _material _value: while they
content the _spirit _they are precious, when this fails they are
worthless.
_A Difficult Question_
Y.M. You keep me confused and perplexed all the time by your elusive
terminology. Sometimes you divide a man up into two or three separate