Related to Charles S. Sherrington, Man on his Nature. 1940.
Description:

'History has set down much concerning say the last 8000 years. But a past which counts in millions of years can supply a broader criteria as to what it is to be. Is 8000 years a perspective long enough to disclose reliably a general trend of our past, to forecast our future by it?

If, as is sometimes said, history is the tracing of past purposes, here [in the history of the evolution of the earth] is a history which might, while telling of past purposes, whisper to us of future purpose. It would seem so to whisper to us, to whisper that we have been Earth's purpose. We must not let that flatter us too far. It adds 'not as an end but as a means to a further end'.' (252)

 

'The planet has... latterly become a place of thinking. More, it now harbours mind which recognizes values as 'values'. It is a planet now with hopes and fears and tentative 'right' and 'wrong'. A planet which is human. What will be to follow? Our human spectator watching his mother-earth believes that there will come forth from her side more mind, and still more mind. In believing this, he is not doubtful of the gearing together of energy and mind.' (254)

 

'Altruism has to grow. It is not enough for Man to deplore. That is less to mend things than to run from them. A positive charity is wanted; passive negation is not enough. In effect it needs a soul-growth which shall open out a higher self. That asks of the biological an unusual and even a perilously unnatural step. That [sic] might be endangered by altruism, the poise of biological sacredness of the self, the point d'appui of 'zest-to-live'.' (281)

 

'Evolution has constantly dealt with the relation between bodily and mental as more than mere analogy. It is altruism as passion. It marks, we may think, at the present time the climax of mind. It is well to note it is not essentially rational. It is often more germane to emotion than to intellect. It belongs, if you willl, to sentiment, and it can elevate sentiment so that intellect at best ranks as a tool for sentiment. It creates a reasoned emotion. It may have the conquest of the world before it, in which case reason will play its part, as a tool. It may mean a human future led by womankind more eminently than by men. There rises to the lips, a little wantonly, the simile of a bird brain with human cortex appende, a birds mind with human intelligence attached. And we remember the true bird-mind is of newer type than our own.

Taking nature broadly, altruism as yet has little place there. Are the shoal and th eherd altruism? Nevertheless, if our new-found civilizations tell us anything, human altruism is growing. Perhaps the highest mass-product of man's civilized society has been the 'human' peace, such as it is, within its border. Peace, though not altruism pure, is yet greater opportunity for greater altruism. Altruistic sympathy as permeating peoples may be small as yet; but, as the periods of the planetreckon, civilization itself is young. If in the past teh cohesion of the families changed the whole outlook of life upon the planet, shall not the wider cohesion of individual lives carry the transformation further, with such consequences to the flowering of life as beggar our fancy to conceive?

Ah Love! could thou and I with Fate conspire

To grasp this sorry Scheme of Things entire,

Would not we shatter it to bits - and then

Re-mould it nearer to the Heart's Desire!

There spings in him a spirit of insurrection. Standing on his planet he, its own product, harbours rebellion against the process which has enthroned him. Mind awakened by distress of mind. His altruism is in bud.' (282-283)

 

'This world with all its sweep of content and extent taxes utterance to indicate. Yet it is given us in so far as to seize it, and as one coherent harmony. More; it is revealing to us the 'values', as Truth, Charity, Beauty. Surely these are compensation to us for much. And will not this compensation grow? Charity will grow; Truth grows; and even as Truth so Beauty. Music as her ear grows finer embraces what were once discords. The mind which began by being one thing has truly - as so often in evolution - gone on to being another thing.' (292)

 

[pp. from 2nd ed., 1951]

Related to Edward Carpenter, Civilization: its cause and cure, and other essays. 1889.
Description:

[page numbers from 2nd ed. (1891)]

 

'Exfoliation', pp. 129-147.

 

'Man himself contains, or rather is, the reconcilement of... numberless... contradictions. We actually every day perform and exhibit miracles which the mental part of us is utterly powerless to grapple with. Yet the solution, the intelligent solution and understanding of them is in us; only it involves a higher order of consciousness than we usually deal with—a consciousness possibly which includes and transcends the ego and the non-ego, and so can envisage both at the same time and equally—a fourth-dimensional consciousness to whose gaze the interiors of solid bodies are exposed like mere surfaces—a consciousness to whose perception some usual antitheses like cause and effect, matter and spirit, past and future, simply do not exist. I say these higher orders of consciousness are in us waiting for their evolution; and, until they evolve, we are powerless really to understand anything of the world around us.' (129-130)

 

'To-day society is ill at ease; a dim feeling of discontent pervades all ranks and classes. A new sense of justice, of fraternity, has descended among us, which is not satisfied with mere chatter of demand and supply. For a long time this new sentiment or desire remains vague and unformed, but at last it resolves itself into shape; it takes intellectual form, books are written, plans formed; then after a time definite new organisations, for the distinct purpose of expressing these ideas, begin to exist in the body of the old society; and before so very long the whole outer structure of society will have been reorganised by them. After a few centuries the ideas for whose realisation we now fight and struggle with an intense consciousness will have become commonplace, accepted institutions, more or less effete and ready to succumb before fresh mental births taking place from within.' (139)

 

'It has been frequently said that great material changes are succeeded by intellectual and finally by moral revolutions—as the conquests of Alexander passed on into the literary expansion of the Alexandrian schools and thence into the establishment of Christianity, or as the mechanical developments of our own time have been followed by immense literary and scientific activities, and are obviously passing over now into a great social regeneration; but a reconsideration of the matter might, I take it, lead us not so much to look on the later changes as caused by the earlier, as to look on the earlier as the indications and first outward and visible signs of the coming of the later. When a man feels in himself the upheaval of a new moral fact, he sees plainly enough that that fact cannot come into the actual world all at once—not without first a destruction of the existing order of society—such a destruction as makes him feel satanic; then an intellectual revolution; and lastly only, a new order embodying the new impulse. When this new impulse has thoroughly materialised itself, then after a time will come another inward birth, and similar changes will be passed through again. So it might be said that the work of each age is not to build on the past, but to rise out of the past and throw it off; only of course in such matters where all forms of thought are inadequate it is hard to say that one way of looking at the subject is truer than another. As before, we should endeavour to look at the thing from different sides.' (143-144)

 

There is a kind of knowledge or consciousness in us—as of our bodily parts, or affections, or deep-seated mental beliefs—which forms the base of our more obvious and self-conscious thought. This systemic knowledge grows even while the brain sleeps. It is not by any means absolute or infallible, but it affords, at any moment in man's history, the axiomatic ground on which his thought-structures, scientific and other, are built. Thus the axioms of Euclid are part of our present systemic knowledge, and afford the ground of all our geometry structures. But as the systemic consciousness grows, the ground shifts and the structures reared upon it fall. All our modern science, for instance, is founded on the acceptation of mechanical cause and effect as a basic fact of consciousness; but when that base gives way the entire structure will cave in, and a new edifice will have to be reared. Similarly, when the human form becomes distinctly visible to us in the animals—as an unavoidable part of our consciousness—this consciousness will form a new base or axiom for all our thought on the subject, and the theory of evolution, as hitherto conceived by science, will be entirely transformed.

Thus, although the experimental investigatory coral-reef accretion method of modern science is very valuable within its range, it must not be forgotten that the human mind does not progress more than temporarily by this method—that its progression is a matter of growth from within, and involves a continual breaking away of the bases of all thought-structures; so that, while this latter—i.e., the progression of the systemic consciousness of man—is necessary and continuous, the rise and fall of his thought-systems is accidental, so to speak, and discontinuous.' (146-147)

 

Related to Edward Carpenter, Pagan and Christian Creeds: their origin and meaning. c.1920.
Description:

'And so in the present day a new problem arises, namely how to account for the appearance of this great Phenomenon, with its orderly phases of evolution, and its own spontaneous growths in all corners of the globe—this phenomenon which has had such a strange sway over the hearts of men, which has attracted them with so weird a charm, which has drawn out their devotion, love and tenderness, which has consoled them in sorrow and affliction, and yet which has stained their history with such horrible sacrifices and persecutions and cruelties. What has been the instigating cause of it?

The answer which I propose to this question, and which is developed to some extent in the following chapters, is a psychological one. It is that the phenomenon proceeds from, and is a necessary accompaniment of, the growth of human Consciousness itself—its growth, namely, through the three great stages of its unfoldment. These stages are (1) that of the simple or animal consciousness, (2) that of SELF-consciousness, and (3) that of a third stage of consciousness which has not as yet been effectively named, but whose indications and precursive signs we here and there perceive in the rites and prophecies and mysteries of the early religions, and in the poetry and art and literature generally of the later civilizations.' (16)

 

'in this third stage, it would seem, one comes upon the real FACTS of the inner life—in contradistinction to the fancies and figments of the second stage; and so one reaches the final point of conjunction between Science and Religion.' (17)

 

'As with the first blossoming of self-consciousness in the human mind came the dawn of an immense cycle of experience... so now the redemption, the return, the restoration has to come through another forward step, in the same domain. Abandoning the quest and the glorification of the separate isolated self we have to return to the cosmic universal life. It is the blossoming indeed of this 'new' life in the deeps of our minds which is salvation... It is the return home, the return into direct touch with Nature and Man - the liberation from the long exile of separation, from the painful sense of isolation and the odious nightmare of guilt and 'sin.' Can we doubt that this new birth - this third stage of consciousness, if we like to call it so - has to come, that it is indeed not merely a pious hope or a tentative theory, but a fact testified to already by a cloud of witnesses in the past... ?' (235-236)

 

'The second stage of human psychologic evolution is an aberration, a divorce, a parenthesis. With its culmination and dismissal the mind passes back into the simple state of union with the Whole. (The state of Ekdgratd in the Hindu phil- osophy: one-pointedness, singleness of mind.) And the consciousness of the Whole, and of things past and things to come and things far around — which consciousness had been shut out by the concentration on the local self — begins to return again. This is not to say, of course, that the excursus in the second stage has been a loss and a defect. On the contrary, it means that the Return is a bringing of all that has been gained during the period of exile (all sorts of mental and technical knowledge and skill, emotional de- velopments, finesse and adaptability of mind) back into har- mony with the Whole. It means ultimately a great gain. The Man, perfected, comes back to a vastly extended harmony. He enters again into a real understanding and confidential relationship with his physical body and with the body of the society in which he dwells — from both of which he has been sadly divorced; and he takes up again the broken thread of the Cosmic Life.' (250)

 

'Not only does the Third Stage bring illumination, intuitive understanding of processes in Nature and Humanity, sympathy with the animals, artistic capacity, and so forth, but it necessarily brings a new Order of Society. A preposterous — one may almost say a hideous — social Age is surely drawing to its end. The debacle we are witnessing to-day all over Europe (including the British Islands), the break-up of old institutions, the generally materialistic outlook on life, the coming to the surface of huge masses of diseased and fatuous populations, the scum and dregs created by the past order, all point to the End of a Dispensation.' (254)

 

'With the Cosmic stage comes also necessarily the rehabilitation of the whole of Society in one fellowship (the true Democracy). Not the rule or domination of one class or caste — as of the Intellectual, the Pious, the Com- mercial or the INIilitary — but the fusion or at least consen- taneous organization of all (as in the corresponding functions of the human Body)... The liberated and emancipated Man passes unconstrained and unconstraining through all grades and planes of human fellow- ship, equal and undisturbed, and never leaving his true home and abiding place in the heart of all. Equally necessarily with the rehabilitation of Society as an entirety will follow the rehabilitation of the entire physical body in each member of Society... Why should the head brag of its ascendancy and domination, and the heart be smothered up and hidden? It will only be a life far more in the open air than that which we lead at present, which will re- store the balance and ultimately bring us back to sanity and health.' (255-256)

 

'it seems that we are now on the edge of a further stage when the theories and the creeds, scientific and religious, are on the verge of collapsing, but in such a way as to leave the sense and the perception of Unity — the real content of the whole process — not only undestroyed, but immensely heightened and illuminated. Meanwhile the taboos — of which there remain some still, both religious and scientific — have been gradually breaking up and merging themselves into a reasonable and humane order of life and philosophy.' (262-263)

 

It may, therefore, happen — and this quite independently of the growth of a World-cult such as I have described, though by no means in antagonism to it — that a religious philosophy or Theosophy might develop and spread, similar to the Giianam of the Hindus or the Gnosis of the pre-Christian sects, which would become, first among individuals and afterwards among large bodies over the world, the religion of — or perhaps one should say the religious approach to the Third State.' (268)

 

'We have seen that there has been an age of non-differentiation in the Past — non-differentiation from other members of the Tribe, from the Animals, from Nature and the Spirit or Spirits of nature; why should there not arise a similar sense of non-differentiation in the Future — similar but more extended more intelligent? Certainly this will arrive, in its own appointed time. There will be a surpassing of the bounds of separation and division. There will be a surpassing of all Taboos. We have seen the use and function of Taboos in the early stages of Evolution and how progress and growth have been very much a matter of their gradual extinction and assimilation into the general body of rational thought and feeling. Unreasoning and idiotic taboos still linger, but they grow weaker. A new Morality will come which will shake itself free from them. The sense of kinship with the animals (as in the old rituals)- will be restored; the sense of kinship with all the races of mankind will grow and become consolidated; the sense of the defilement and im- purity of the human body will (with the adoption of a generally clean and wholesome life) pass away; and the body itself will come to be regarded more as a collection of shrines in which the gods may be worshiped and less as a mere organ of trivial self-gratifications;^ there will be no form of Nature, or of human life or of the lesser creatures, which will be barred from the approach of Man or from the intimate and penetrating invasion of his spirit; and as in certain ceremonies and after honorable toils and labors a citizen is sometimes received into the community of his own city, so the emancipated human being on the completion of his long long pilgrimage on Earth will be presented with the Freedom of the Universe.' (269-270)

 

'We can see that in modern times the huge and unlimited powers of production by machinery, united with a growing tendency towards intelligent Birth-control, are preparing the way for an age of Communism and communal Plenty which will inevitably be associated (partly as cause and partly as effect) with a new general phase of consciousness, involving the mitigation of the struggle for existence, the growth of intuitional and psychical perception, the spread of amity and solidarity, the disappearance of War, and the realization (in degree) of the Cosmic life.' (272)

 

'there remains in the end a self-consciousness which need by no means be abandoned, which indeed only comes to its true fruition and imderstanding when it recognizes its affiliation with the Whole, and glories in an individuality which is an expression both of itself and of the whole.' (273-274)

 

'Fear bred by Ignorance. From that source has sprung the long catalogue of follies, cruelties and sufferings which mark the records of the human race since the dawn of history; and to the overcoming of this Fear we perforce must look for our future deliverance, and for the discovery, even in the midst of this world, of our true Home. The time is coming when the positive constructive element must domi- nate. It is inevitable that Man must ever build a state of society around him after the pattern and image of his own interior state... With the restoration of the sentiment of the Common Life, and the gradual growth of a mental attitude corresponding, there will emerge from the flood something like a solid earth — something on which it will be possible to build with good hope for the future.' (275-276)

 

'The first condition of social happiness and prosperity must be the sense of the Common Life. This sense, which instinctively underlay the whole Tribal order of the far past — which first came to consciousness in the worship of a thousand pagan divinities, and in the rituals of countless sacrifices, initiations, redemptions, love-feasts and communions, which inspired the dreams of the Golden Age, and flashed out for a time in the Communism of the early Christians and in their adorations of the risen Savior — must in the end be the creative condition of a new order: it must provide the material of which the Golden City waits to be built. The long travail of the World-religion will not have been in vain, which assures this consummation. What the signs and conditions of any general advance into this new order of life and consciousness will be, we know not. It may be that as to individuals the revelation of a new vision often comes quite suddenly, and generally perhaps after a period of great suffering, so to society at large a similar revelation will arrive — like ''the lightning which cometh out of the East and shineth even unto the West" — with unexpected swiftness. On the other hand it would perhaps be wise not to count too much on any such sudden transformation.' (276-277)

 

'Dr. Frazer [author of The Golden Bough] is right in thinking that "a way of looking at phenomena" different from the way of Science, may some day prevail. But I think this change will come, not so much by the growth of Science itself or the extension of its 'hypotheses,' as by a growth and expansion of the human heart and a change in its psychology and powers of perception... Gradually, out of an infinite mass of folly and delusion, the human soul has in this way disentangled itself, and will in the future disentangle itself, to emerge at length in the light of true Freedom.' (278)

 

'To-day... taboos and terrors still linger, many of them, in the form of conventions of morality, uneasy strivings of conscience, doubts and desperations of religion; but ultimately Man will emerge from all these things, free — familiar, that is, with them all, making use of all, allowing generously for the values of all, but hampered and bound by none. He will realize the inner meaning of the creeds and rituals of the ancient religions, and will hail with joy the fulfilment of their far prophecy down the ages — finding after all the long-expected Saviour of the world within his own breast, and Paradise in the disclosure there of the everlasting peace of the soul.' (279)

 

'that which we are seeking is indeed something very vast — something far extending around, yet also buried deep in the hidden recesses of our minds. How far, how deep, we do not know. We can only say that as far as the indications point the true self is profounder and more far-reaching than anything we have yet fathomed.' (298)

 

'The external apparatus of thought is of no use. Argument is of no use. But experience and direct perception are possible; and probably all the experiences of life and of mankind through the ages are gradually deepening our powers of perception to that point where the vision will at last rise upon the inward eye.' (305)

 

'The word Democracy indicates something of the kind — the rule of the Demos, that is of the common life. The coming of that will transform, not only our Markets and our Law Courts and our sense of Property, and other institutions, into something really great and glorious instead of the dismal masses of rubbish which they at present are; but it will transform our sense of Morality.' (307)

 

'At last there comes a time when we recognize — or see that we shall have to recognize — an inner Equality between ourselves and all others; not of course an external equality — for that would be absurd and impossible — but an inner and profound and universal Equality. And so we come again to the mystic root-conception of Democracy. ' (308)

 

 

Related to Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil: prelude to a philosophy of the future. 1886.
Description:

'2. ... In spite of all the value which may belong to the true, the positive, and the unselfish, it might be possible that a higher and more fundamental value for life generally should be assigned to pretence, to the will to delusion, to selfishness, and cupidity. It might even be possible that what constitutes the value of those good and respected things, consists precisely in their being insidiously related, knotted, and crocheted to these evil and apparently opposed things — perhaps even in being essentially identical with them. Perhaps! But who wishes to concern himself with such dangerous "Perhapses "! For that investigation one must await the advent of a new order of philosophers, such as will have other tastes and inclinations, the reverse of those hitherto prevalent — philosophers of the dangerous "Perhaps" in every sense of the term. And to speak in all seriousness, I see such new philosophers beginning to appear.' (9)

 

'42. A new order of philosophers is appearing; I shall venture to baptize them by a name not without danger. As far as I understand them, as far as they allow themselves to be understood — for it is their nature to wish to remain something of a puzzle — these philosophers of the future might rightly, perhaps also wrongly, claim to be designated as "tempters" This name itself is after all only an attempt, or, if it be preferred, a temptation.

43. Will they be new friends of "truth,'' these coming philosophers? Very probably, for all philosophers hitherto have loved their truths. But assuredly they will not be dogmatists. It must be contrary to their pride, and also contrary to their taste, that their truth should still be truth for every one — that which has hitherto been the secret wish and ultimate purpose of all dogmatic efforts. " My opinion is my opinion: another person has not easily a right to it" — such a philosopher of the future will say, perhaps. One must renounce the bad taste of wishing to agree with many people. "Good " is no longer good when one's neighbour takes it into his mouth. And how could there be a "common good"! The expression contradicts itself; that which can be common is always of 58 BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL. small value. In the end things must be as they are and have always been — the great things remain for the great, the abysses for the profound, the delicacies and thrills for the refined, and, to sum up shortly, everything rare for the rare.

44. Need I say expressly after all this that they will be free, very free spirits, these philosophers of the future — as certainly also they will not be merely free spirits, but something more, higher, greater, and fundamentally different, which does not wish to be misunderstood and mistaken? But while I say this, I feel under obligation almost as much to them as to ourselves (we free spirits who are their heralds and forerunners), to sweep away from ourselves conjointly a stupid old prejudice and misunderstanding, which, like a fog, has too long made the conception of "free spirit'' obscure. In every country of Europe, and the same in America, there is at present something which makes an abuse of this name : a very narrow, prepossessed, enchained class of spirits, who desire almost the opposite of what our intentions and instincts prompt — not to mention that in respect to the new philosophers who are appearing, they must still more be closed windows and bolted doors. Briefly and regrettably, they belong to the levellers, these wrongly named "free spirits " — as glib-tongued and scribe-fingered slaves of the democratic taste and its "modern ideas ": all of them men without solitude, without personal solitude, blunt honest fellows to whom neither courage nor honourable conduct ought to be denied; only, they are not free, and are ludicrously superficial, especially in their innate partiality for seeing the cause of almost all human misery and failure in the old forms in which society has hitherto existed — a notion which happily inverts the truth entirely!' (57-59)

 

'We, who hold a different belief — we, who regard the democratic movement, not only as a degenerating form of political organisation, but as equivalent to a degenerating, a waning type of man, as involving his mediocrising and depreciation: where have we to fix our hopes? In new philosophers — there is no other alternative: in minds strong and original enough to initiate opposite estimates of value, to transvalue and invert "eternal valuations"; in forerunners, in men of the future, who in the present shall fix the constraints and fasten the knots which will compel millenniums to take new paths. To teach man the future of humanity as his will, as depending on human will, and to make preparation for vast hazardous enterprises and collective attempts in rearing and educating, in order thereby to put an end to the frightful rule of folly and chance which has hitherto gone by the name of "history" (the folly of the "greatest number" is only its last form) — for that purpose a new type of philosophers and commanders will some time or other be needed, at the very idea of which everything that has existed in the way of occult, terrible, and benevolent beings might look pale and dwarfed.' (128-129)

 

'The universal degeneracy of mankind to the level of the "man of the future" — as idealised by the socialistic fools and shallow-pates — this degeneracy and dwarfing of man to an absolutely gregarious animal (or as they call it, to a man of "free society"), this brutalising of man into a pigmy with equal rights and claims, is undoubtedly possible! He who has thought out this possibility to its ultimate conclusion knows another loathing unknown to the rest of mankind — and perhaps also a new mission!' (130-131)

 

'210. Supposing, then, that in the picture of the philosophers of the future, some trait suggests the question whether they must not perhaps be sceptics in the last-mentioned sense, something in them would only be designated thereby — and not they themselves. With equal right they might call themselves critics; and assuredly they will be men of experiments. By the name with which I ventured to baptize them, I have already expressly emphasised their attempting and their love of attempting: was this because, as critics in body and soul, they will love to make use of experiments in a new, and perhaps wider and more dangerous sense? In their passion for knowledge, will they have to go further in daring and painful attempts than the sensitive and pampered taste of a democratic century can approve of? — There is no doubt: these coming ones will be least able to dispense with the serious and not unscrupulous qualities which distinguish the critic from the sceptic: I mean the certainty as to standards of worth, the conscious employment of a unity of method, the wary courage, the standing-alone, and the capacity for self-responsibility; indeed, they will avow among themselves a delight in denial and dissection, and a certain considerate cruelty, which knows how to handle the knife surely and deftly, even when the heart bleeds. They will be sterner (and perhaps not always towards themselves only) than humane people may desire, they will not deal with the "truth" in order that it may "please" them, or "elevate" and "inspire" them — they will rather have little faith in "truth" bringing with it such revels for the feelings. They will smile, those rigorous spirits, when any one says in their presence: "that thought elevates me, why should it not be true?" or: "that work enchants me, why should it not be beautiful?" or: "that artist enlarges me, why should he not be great?" Perhaps they will not only have a smile, but a genuine disgust for all that is thus rapturous, idealistic, feminine, and hermaphroditic; and if any one could look into their inmost heart, he would not easily find therein the intention to reconcile "Christian sentiments" with "antique taste," or even with "modern parliamentarism" (the kind of reconciliation necessarily found even amongst philosophers in our very uncertain and consequently very conciliatory century). Critical discipline, and every habit that conduces to purity and rigour in intellectual matters, will not only be demanded from themselves by these philosophers of the future; they may even make a display thereof as their special adornment — nevertheless they will not want to be called critics on that account. It will seem to them no small indignity to philosophy to have it decreed, as is so welcome nowadays, that "philosophy itself is criticism and critical science — and nothing else whatever!" Though this estimate of philosophy may enjoy the approval of all the Positivists of France and Germany (and possibly it even flattered the heart and taste of Kant: let us call to mind the titles of his principal works), our new philosophers will say, notwithstanding, that critics are instruments of the philosopher, and just on that account, as instruments, they are far from being philosophers themselves! Even the great Chinaman of Konigsberg was only a great critic.' (149-151)

 

'The real philosophers, however, are commanders and law-givers; they say: "Thus shall it be!" They determine first the Whither and the Why of mankind, and thereby set aside the previous labour of all philosophical workers, and all subjugators of the past — they grasp at the future with a creative hand, and whatever is and was, becomes for them thereby a means, an instrument, and a hammer. Their "knowing " is creating, their creating is a law-giving, their will to truth is — Will to Power. — Are there at present such philosophers? Have there ever been such philosophers? Must there not be such philosophers some day? ...' (152)

 

 

 

[page numbers and text from edition translated by Helen Zimmern (1907)]

Related to George Bernard Shaw, Back to Methusela. 1921.
Description:

Over the five plays, Shaw oulines a vision of the evolution humanity from a short-lived species that refuses to take life seriously, to a long-lived species with a very different set of priorities than that of its ancestors. The central conceit - that humanity's next stage of evolution will be to live to 300 rather than 70 years - becomes a means by which Shaw is able to speculate on the intrerests and concerns of humans that have been emancipated from an obsession with their imminent death (a problem that Shaw. as he explains in his preface, sees as central to the iniquitous, warlike society that he saw around him during the early decades of the twentieth century).

It is not until the fifth and final play of the pentet that Shaw outlines his thoughts on the future destiny of mind in in any detail. As indicated by its title, the year is AD 31920. Long-lived humanity has evolved an ethos entirely in keeping with its longer life-span, and which is very much at odds with the prior concerns of man. Indeed, these prior concerns are put into sharp relief through the interaction of children and adults ('ancients') in this new society. For a brief time, following their (fully-grown) entrance into the world, individuals pass through an initial stage of psychological development during which they must grapple with the beliefs and fears that they have inherited from their short-lived ancestors. No longer subject to the need to provide for themselves, these fully-grown children cling on to a vision of everlasting love and affection for one another, and express their ideals through the creation of art and by clinging on to their romantic beliefs.

The value of the children's beliefs and art is brought in to question through their interaction with several older members of society at the occasion of a birth. During this interaction, a sculptor, 'Martellus', declares that the images and objects that he has been creating no longer satisfy him. As he explains to the other artists, he no longer seeks to represent beauty through sculpture, as he has come to realise that life itself will always be more beautiful than objects that imitate it:

'MARTELLUS. ... A live ancient is better than a dead statue... Anything alive is better than anything that is only pretending to be alive. [To Arjillax] Your disillusion with your works of beauty is only the beginning of your disillusion with images of all sorts. As your hand became more skilful and your chisel cut deeper, you strove to get nearer and nearer to truth and reality, discarding the fleeting fleshly lure, and making images of the mind that fascinates to the end. But how can so noble an inspiration be satisfied with any image, even an image of the truth? In the end the intellectual conscience that tore you away from the fleeting in art to the eternal must tear you away from art altogether, because art is false and life alone is true.' (257-258)

This abandonment of attempts to represent marks what Shaw characterizes as the maturation of man. As the youth of the future society shed their concerns with objects and representations of all kinds they begin to realise that even their bodies, like the art-object that they have been producing, mere play-things that are of little concern to those who have come into contact with the higher consciousness that maturity brings. As the elders explain:

'THE SHE-ANCIENT. Yes, child: art is the magic mirror you make to reflect your invisible dreams in visible pictures. You use a glass mirror to see your face: you use works of art to see your soul. But we who are older use neither glass mirrors nor works of art. We have a direct sense of life. When you gain that you will put aside your mirrors and statues, your toys and your dolls.

THE HE-ANCIENT. Yet we too have our toys and our dolls. That is the trouble of the ancients.

ARJILLAX. What! The ancients have their troubles! It is the first time I ever heard one of them confess it.

THE HE-ANCIENT. Look at us. Look at me. This is my body, my blood, my brain; but it is not me. I am the eternal life, the perpetual resurrection; but [striking his body] this structure, this organism, this makeshift, can be made by a boy in a laboratory, and is held back from dissolution only by my use of it. Worse still, it can be broken by a slip of the foot, drowned by a cramp in the stomach, destroyed by a flash from the clouds. Sooner or later, its destruction is certain.

THE SHE-ANCIENT. Yes: this body is the last doll to be discarded.' (286-287)

Ultimately, the physical reality of the young members of society gives way to a purely psychological existence, into which material concerns do not enter:

'THE NEWLY BORN. What is your destiny?

THE HE-ANCIENT. To be immortal.

THE SHE-ANCIENT. The day will come when there will be no people, only thought.

THE HE-ANCIENT. And that will be life eternal.' (290)

Ultimately, this mode of existence marks the end of the capacities of the human mind, and the beginning of a new psychological existence inaccessible to minds that remain trapped in individual bodies:

'ECRASIA. Why do the other ancients never come and give us a turn?

THE SHE-ANCIENT. It is difficult for them. They have forgotten how to speak; how to read; even how to think in your fashion. We do not communicate with one another in that way or apprehend the world as you do.

THE HE-ANCIENT. I find it more and more difficult to keep up your language. Another century or two and it will be impossible. I shall have to be relieved by a younger shepherd.' (293)

 

 

Related to H.G. Wells, Anticipations of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon Human Life and Thought. 1901.
Description:

'The final attainment of this great synthesis, like the social deliquescence and reconstruction dealt with in the earlier of these anticipations, has an air of being a process independent of any collective or conscious will in man, as being the expression of a greater Will; it is working now, and may work out to its end vastly, and yet at times almost imperceptibly, as some huge secular movement in Nature, the raising of a continent, the crumbling of a mountain-chain, goes on to its appointed culmination. Or one may compare the process to a net that has surrounded, and that is drawn continually closer and closer upon, a great and varied multitude of men.' (246-247)

 

'The splendid dream of a Federal Europe, which opened the nineteenth century for France, may perhaps, after all, come to something like realization at the opening of the twenty-first. But just how long these things take, just how easily or violently they are brought about, depends, after all, entirely upon the rise in general intelligence in Europe. An ignorant, a merely trained or a merely cultured people, will not understand these coalescences, will fondle old animosities and stage hatreds, and for such a people there must needs be disaster, forcible conformities and war.' (259)

 

'Now, all these three great coalescences, this shrivelling up and vanishing of boundary lines, will be the outward and visible accompaniment of that inward and social reorganization which it is the main object of these Anticipations to display. I have sought to show that in peace and war alike a process has been and is at work, a process with all the inevitableness and all the patience of a natural force, whereby the great swollen, shapeless, hypertrophied social mass of to-day must give birth at last to a naturally and informally organized, educated class, an unprecedented sort of people, a New Republic dominating the world. It will be none of our ostensible governments that will effect this great clearing up; it will be the mass of power and intelligence altogether outside the official state systems of to-day that will make this great clearance, a new social Hercules that will strangle the serpents of war and national animosity in his cradle.' (262)

 

'The necessary condition to the effective development of the New Republic is a universally accessible, spacious, and varied educational system working in an atmosphere of efficient criticism and general intellectual activity.' (267-268)

 

'The establishment of modern and efficient schools is alone not sufficient for the intellectual needs of the coming time. The school and university are merely the preparation for the life of mental activity in which the citizen of the coming state will live. The three years of university and a lifetime of garrulous stagnation which constitutes the mind's history of many a public schoolmaster, for example, and most of the clergy to-day, will be impossible under the new needs. The old-fashioned university, secure in its omniscience, merely taught; the university of the coming time will, as its larger function, criticize and learn. It will be organized for research—for the criticism, that is, of thought and nature. And a subtler and a greater task before those who will presently swear allegiance to the New Republic is to aid and stimulate that process of sound adult mental activity which is the cardinal element in human life.' (270)

 

'The men of the New Republic will be intelligently critical men, and they will have the courage of their critical conclusions. For the sake of the English tongue, for the sake of the English peoples, they will set themselves to put temptingly within the reach of all readers of the tongue, and all possible readers of the tongue, an abundance of living literature... publishing associations will sustain spaciously conceived organs of opinion and criticism, which will begin by being patiently and persistently good, and so develop into power. And the more distinctly the New Republic emerges, the less danger there will be of these associations being allowed to outlive their service in a state of ossified authority. New groups of men and new phases of thought will organize their publishing associations as children learn to talk.

And while the New Republic is thus developing its idea of itself and organizing its mind, it will also be growing out of the confused and intricate businesses and undertakings and public services of the present time, into a recognizable material body. ' (272-274)

'If the surmise of a developing New Republic... be indeed no idle dream, but an attainable possibility in the future, and to that end it is that the preceding Anticipations have been mainly written, it becomes a speculation of very great interest to forecast something of the general shape and something even of certain details of that common body of opinion which the New Republic, when at last it discovers and declares itself, will possess.' (279)

 

'I believe that these prevailing men of the future, like many of the saner men of to-day, having so formulated their fundamental belief, will presume to no knowledge whatever, will presume to no possibility of knowledge of the real being of God. They will have no positive definition of God at all. They will certainly not indulge in "that something, not ourselves, that makes for righteousness" (not defined) or any defective claptrap of that sort. They will content themselves with denying the self-contradictory absurdities of an obstinately anthropomorphic theology, they will regard the whole of being, within themselves and without, as the sufficient revelation of God to their souls, and they will set themselves simply to that revelation, seeking its meaning towards themselves faithfully and courageously.' (281-283)

 

'The men of the New Republic will hold and understand quite clearly the doctrine that in the real world of man's experience, there is Free Will. They will understand that constantly, as a very condition of his existence, man is exercising choice between alternatives, and that a conflict between motives that have different moral values constantly arises. That conflict between Predestination and Free Will, which is so puzzling to untrained minds, will not exist for them. They will know that in the real world of sensory experience, will is free, just as new sprung grass is green, wood hard, ice cold, and toothache painful... But the human will does not exist in the abstract world of reasoned science, in the world of atoms and vibrations, that rigidly predestinate scheme of things in space and time. The human will exists in this world of men and women, in this world where the grass is green and desire beckons and the choice is often so wide and clear between the sense of what is desirable and what is more widely and remotely right. In this world of sense and the daily life, these men will believe with an absolute conviction, that there is free will and a personal moral responsibility in relation to that indistinctly seen purpose which is the sufficient revelation of God to them so far as this sphere of being goes....' (284-285)

 

'so far as the intellectual life of the world goes, this present time is essentially the opening phase of a period of ethical reconstruction, a reconstruction of which the New Republic will possess the matured result. Throughout the nineteenth century there has been such a shattering and recasting of fundamental ideas, of the preliminaries to ethical propositions, as the world has never seen before.' (287)

 

men's concern... will no longer be to work out a system of penalties for the sins of dead men, but to understand and participate in this great development that now dawns on the human understanding. The insoluble problems of pain and death, gaunt, incomprehensible facts as they were, fall into place in the gigantic order that evolution unfolds. All things are integral in the mighty scheme, the slain builds up the slayer, the wolf grooms the horse into swiftness, and the tiger calls for wisdom and courage out of man. All things are integral, but it has been left for men to be consciously integral, to take, at last, a share in the process, to have wills that have caught a harmony with the universal will, as sand grains flash into splendour under the blaze of the sun. There will be many who will never be called to this religious conviction, who will lead their little lives like fools, playing foolishly with religion and all the great issues of life, or like the beasts that perish, having sense alone; but those who, by character and intelligence, are predestinate to participate in the reality of life, will fearlessly shape all their ethical determinations and public policy anew, from a fearless study of themselves and the apparent purpose that opens out before them.' (291-292)

 

'How will the landscape shape itself to the dominant men of the new time and in relation to themselves? What is the will and purpose that these men of will and purpose will find above and comprehending their own? Into this our inquiry resolves itself. They will hold with Schopenhauer, I believe, and with those who build themselves on Malthus and Darwin, that the scheme of being, in which we live is a struggle of existences to expand and develop themselves to their full completeness, and to propagate and increase themselves. But, being men of action, they will feel nothing of the glamour of misery that irresponsible and sexually vitiated shareholder, Schopenhauer, threw over this recognition. The final object of this struggle among existences they will not understand; they will have abandoned the search for ultimates; they will state this scheme of a struggle as a proximate object, sufficiently remote and spacious to enclose and explain all their possible activities. They will seek God's purpose in the sphere of their activities, and desire no more, as the soldier in battle desires no more, than the immediate conflict before him. They will admit failure as an individual aspect of things, as a soldier seeking victory admits the possibility of death; but they will refuse to admit as a part of their faith in God that any existence, even if it is an existence that is presently entirely erased, can be needless or vain. It will have reacted on the existences that survive; it will be justified for ever in the modification it has produced in them. They will find in themselves—it must be remembered I am speaking of a class that has naturally segregated, and not of men as a whole—a desire, a passion almost, to create and organize, to put in order, to get the maximum result from certain possibilities. They will all be artists in reality, with a passion for simplicity and directness and an impatience of confusion and inefficiency. The determining frame of their ethics, the more spacious scheme to which they will shape the schemes of their individual wills, will be the elaboration of that future world state to which all things are pointing. They will not conceive of it as a millennial paradise, a blissful inconsequent stagnation, but as a world state of active ampler human beings, full of knowledge and energy, free from much of the baseness and limitations, the needless pains and dishonours of the world disorder of to-day, but still struggling, struggling against ampler but still too narrow restrictions and for still more spacious objects than our vistas have revealed. For that as a general end, for the special work that contributes to it as an individual end, they will make the plans and the limiting rules of their lives.' (294-297)

 

'the ethical system of these men of the New Republic, the ethical system which will dominate the world state, will be shaped primarily to favour the procreation of what is fine and efficient and beautiful in humanity—beautiful and strong bodies, clear and powerful minds, and a growing body of knowledge—and to check the procreation of base and servile types, of fear-driven and cowardly souls, of all that is mean and ugly and bestial in the souls, bodies, or habits of men. To do the latter is to do the former; the two things are inseparable. And the method that nature has followed hitherto in the shaping of the world, whereby weakness was prevented from propagating weakness, and cowardice and feebleness were saved from the accomplishment of their desires, the method that has only one alternative, the method that must in some cases still be called in to the help of man, is death. In the new vision death is no inexplicable horror, no pointless terminal terror to the miseries of life, it is the end of all the pain of life, the end of the bitterness of failure, the merciful obliteration of weak and silly and pointless things... .' (298-299)

 

'The men of the New Republic will not be squeamish, either, in facing or inflicting death, because they will have a fuller sense of the possibilities of life than we possess. They will have an ideal that will make killing worth the while; like Abraham, they will have the faith to kill, and they will have no superstitions about death. They will naturally regard the modest suicide of incurably melancholy, or diseased or helpless persons as a high and courageous act of duty rather than a crime. And since they will regard, as indeed all men raised above a brutish level do regard, a very long term of imprisonment as infinitely worse than death, as being, indeed, death with a living misery added to its natural terror, they will, I conceive, where the whole tenor of a man's actions, and not simply some incidental or impulsive action, seems to prove him unfitted for free life in the world, consider him carefully, and condemn him, and remove him from being.' (300-301)

 

'The essential aspect of all this wild and windy business of the sexual relations is, after all, births. Upon this plain fact the people of the emergent New Republic will unhesitatingly go. The pre-eminent value of sexual questions in morality lies in the fact that the lives which will constitute the future are involved. If they are not involved, if we can dissociate this relationship from this issue, then sexual questions become of no more importance than the morality of one's deportment at chess, or the general morality of outdoor games. Indeed, then the question of sexual relationships would be entirely on all fours with, and probably very analogous to, the question of golf. In each case it would be for the medical man and the psychologist to decide how far the thing was wholesome and permissible, and how far it was an aggressive bad habit and an absorbing waste of time and energy. An able-bodied man continually addicted to love-making that had no result in offspring would be just as silly and morally objectionable as an able-bodied man who devoted his chief energies to hitting little balls over golf-links. But no more... in many cases the emergent men of the new time will consider sterile gratification a moral and legitimate thing. St. Paul tells us that it is better to marry than to burn, but to beget children on that account will appear, I imagine, to these coming men as an absolutely loathsome proceeding. They will stifle no spread of knowledge that will diminish the swarming misery of childhood in the slums, they will regard the disinclination of the witless "Society" woman to become a mother as a most amiable trait in her folly... Most of the human types, that by civilized standards are undesirable, are quite willing to die out through such suppressions if the world will only encourage them a little. They multiply in sheer ignorance, but they do not desire multiplication even now, and they can easily be made to dread it. Sensuality aims not at life, but at itself. I believe that the men of the New Republic will deliberately shape their public policy along these lines. They will rout out and illuminate urban rookeries and all places where the base can drift to multiply; they will contrive a land legislation that will keep the black, or yellow, or mean-white squatter on the move; they will see to it that no parent can make a profit out of a child, so that childbearing shall cease to be a hopeful speculation for the unemployed poor; and they will make the maintenance of a child the first charge upon the parents who have brought it into the world. Only in this way can progress escape being clogged by the products of the security it creates.' (304-306)

 

'I believe that the next hundred years will see this new phase of the human history beginning, there will recommence a process of physical and mental improvement in mankind, a raising and elaboration of the average man, that has virtually been in suspense during the greater portion of the historical period. It is possible that in the last hundred years, in the more civilized states of the world, the average of humanity has positively fallen. All our philanthropists, all our religious teachers, seem to be in a sort of informal conspiracy to preserve an atmosphere of mystical ignorance about these matters, which, in view of the irresistible nature of the sexual impulse, results in a swelling tide of miserable little lives. Consider what it will mean to have perhaps half the population of the world, in every generation, restrained from or tempted to evade reproduction! This thing, this euthanasia of the weak and sensual, is possible. On the principles that will probably animate the predominant classes of the new time, it will be permissible, and I have little or no doubt that in the future it will be planned and achieved.' (307-308)

 

'The whole world will be thinking and learning; the old idea of "completing" one's education will have vanished with the fancy of a static universe; every school will be a preparatory school, every college. The school and college will probably give only the keys and apparatus of thought, a necessary language or so, thoroughly done, a sound mathematical training, drawing, a wide and reasoned view of philosophy, some good exercises in dialectics, a training in the use of those stores of fact that science has made. So equipped, the young man and young woman will go on to the technical school of their chosen profession, and to the criticism of contemporary practice for their special efficiency, and to the literature of contemporary thought for their general development... .' (313)

 

'And for the rest, those swarms of black, and brown, and dirty-white, and yellow people, who do not come into the new needs of efficiency?

Well, the world is a world, not a charitable institution, and I take it they will have to go. The whole tenor and meaning of the world, as I see it, is that they have to go. So far as they fail to develop sane, vigorous, and distinctive personalities for the great world of the future, it is their portion to die out and disappear.' (317)

 

'The world has a purpose greater than happiness; our lives are to serve God's purpose, and that purpose aims not at man as an end, but works through him to greater issues.... This, I believe, will be the distinctive quality of the New Republican's belief. And, for that reason, I have not even speculated whether he will hold any belief in human immortality or no. He will certainly not believe there is any post mortem state of rewards and punishments because of his faith in the sanity of God, and I do not see how he will trace any reaction between this world and whatever world there may be of disembodied lives. Active and capable men of all forms of religious profession to-day tend in practice to disregard the question of immortality altogether. So, to a greater degree, will the kinetic men of the coming time.' (317-318)

 

 

Related to J.B.S. Haldane, Possible Worlds and Other Essays. 1928.
Description:

'The Last Judgement':

[Context:] 'In what follows I shah attempt to describe the most probable end of our planet as it might appear to spectators on another. i have been compelled to place the catastrophe within a period of the future accessible to my imagination. For I can imagine what the human race will be like in forty million years, since forty million years ago our ancestors were certainly mammals, and probably quite definitely recognizable as monkeys. But I cannot throw my imagination forward for ten times that period. Four hundred million years ago our ancestors were fish of a very primitive type. I cannot imagine a corresponding change in our descendants. So I have suggested the only means which, so far as I can see, would be able to speed up the catastrophe. The account given here will be broadcast to infants on the planet Venus some forty million years hence.'

 

'At its natural rate of slowing fifty thousand million years would have elapsed before the day became as long as the month, but it was characteristic of the dwellers on Earth that they never looked more than a million years ahead, and the amount of energy available was ridiculously squandered. By the year five million the human race had reached equilibrium; it was perfectly adjusted to its environment, the life of the individual was about three thousand years; and the individuals were 'happy', that is to say, they lived in accordance with instincts which were gratified. The tidal energy available was now fifty million-million horsepower. Large parts of the planet were artificially heated. The continents were remodelled, but human effort was chiefly devoted to the development of personal relationships and to art and music, that is to say, the production of objects, sounds, and patterns of events gratifying to the individual.

Human evolution had ceased. Natural selection had been abolished, and the slow changes due to other causes were traced to their sources and prevented before very great effects had been produced. It is true that some organs found in primitive man, such as the teeth (hard, bone-like structures in the mouth), had disappeared. But largely on aesthetic grounds the human form was not allowed to vary greatly. The instinctive and traditional preferences of the individual, which were still allowed to influence mating, caused a certain standard body form to be preserved. The almost complete abolition of the pain sense which was carried out before the year five million was the most striking piece of artificial evolution accomplished. For us, who do not regard the individual as an end in itself, the value of this step is questionable.

Scientific discovery was largely a thing of the past, and men of a scientific bent devoted themselves to the more intricate problems of mathematics, organic chemistry, or the biology of animals and plants, with little or no regard for practical results. Science and art were blended in the practice of horticulture, and the effort expended on the evolution of beautiful flowers would have served to alter the human race profoundly. But evolution is a process more pleasant to direct than to undergo.'

 

'the human race on Earth was never greatly influenced by an envisaged future. After physiology was discovered primitive men long continued to eat and drink substances which they knew would shorten and spoil their lives. Mineral fuels were also oxidized without much fore-thought.'

 

'A few hundred thousand of the human race, from some of whom we are descended, determined that though men died, man should live for ever. It was only possible for humanity to establish itself on Venus if it were able to withstand the heat and want of oxygen there prevailing, and this could only be done by a deliberate evolution in that direction first accomplished on Earth. Enough was known of the causes responsible for evolution to render the experiment possible. The human material was selected in each generation. All who were not willing were able to resign from participation, and among those whose descendants were destined for the conquest of Venus a tradition and an inheritable psychological disposition grew up such as had not been known on Earth for twenty-five million years. The psychological types which had been common among the saints and soldiers of early history were revived. Confronted once more with an ideal as high as that of religion, but more rational, a task as concrete as and infinitely greater than that of the patriot, man became once more capable of self-transcendence. Those members of mankind who were once more evolving were not happy. They were out of harmony with their surroundings. Disease and crime reappeared among them. For disease is only a failure of bodily function to adjust itself to the environment, and crime a similar failure in behaviour. But disease and crime, as much as heroism and martyrdom, are part of the price which must be paid for evolution. The price is paid by the individual, and the gain is to the race. Among ourselves an individual may not consider his own interests a dozen times in his life. To our ancestors, fresh from the pursuit of individual happiness, the price must often have seemed too great, and in every generation many who have now left no descendants refused to pay it.

The modes of behaviour which our ancestors gradually overcame, and which only recur as the rarest aberrations among ourselves, included not only such self-regarding sentiments as pride and a personal preference concerning mating. They embraced emotions such as pity (an unpleasant feeling aroused by the suffering of other individuals). In a life completely dedicated to membership of a super-organism the one is as superfluous as the other, though altruism found its place in the emotional basis of the far looser type of society prevalent on Earth.'

 

'After the immense efforts of the first colonizers, we have settled down as members of a super-organism with no limits to its possible progress. The evolution of the individual has been brought under complete social control, and besides enormously enhanced intellectual powers we possess two new senses. The one enables us to apprehend radiation of wavelengths between 100 and 1,200 metres, and thus places every individual at all moments of life, both asleep and awake, under the influence of the voice of the community. It is difficult to see how else we could have achieved as complete a solidarity as has been possible. We can never close our consciousness to those wavelengths on which we are told of our nature as components of a super-organism or deity, possibly the only one in space-time, and of its past, present, and future. It appears that on Earth the psychological equivalent of what is transmitted on these wavelengths included the higher forms of art, music, and literature, the individual moral consciousness, and, in the early days of mankind, religion and patriotism. The other wavelengths inform us of matters which are not the concern of all at all times, and we can shut them out if we so desire. Their function is not essentially different from that of instrumental radio-communication on Earth. The new magnetic sense is of less importance, but is of value in flying and otherwise in view of the very opaque character of our atmosphere. It would have been almost superfluous on Earth. We have also recovered the pain sense, which had become vestigial on Earth, but is of value for the survival of the individual under adverse circumstances, and hence to the race. So rapid was our evolution that the crew of the last projectile to reach Venus were incapable of fertile unions with our inhabitants, and they were therefore used for experimental purposes.'

 

'The old human race successfully cultivated individual happiness and has been destroyed by fire from heaven. This is not a cause for great regret, since happiness does not summate. The happiness of ten million individuals is not a million fold the happiness of ten. But the unanimous co-operation of ten million individuals is something beyond their individual behaviour, it is the life of a super-organism. If, as many of the Earth-dwellers hoped, the Moon had broken up quietly, their species might have lasted a thousand million years instead of thirty-nine million, but their achievement would have been no greater.'

 

[Epilogue:]

'I do not see how anyone who has accepted the view of the universe presented by astronomy and geology can suppose that its main purpose is the preparation of a certain percentage of human souls for so much of perfection and happiness as is possible for them. This may be one of its purposes, but it can hardly be the most important. Events are taking place 'for other great and glorious ends' which we can only dimly conjecture. Professor Alexander, for example, in Space, Time, and Deity, suggests that the end towards which 'the whole creation groaneth and travaileth' is the emergence of a new kind of being which will bear the same relation to mind as do mind to life and life to matter. It is the urge towards this which finds its expression in the higher forms of religion. Without necessarily accepting such a view, one can express some of its implications in a myth.'

Related to Richard M. Bucke, Cosmic Consciousness: a study in the evolution of the human mind. 1901.
Description:

'Along with the consciousness of the cosmos there occurs an intellectual enlightenment or illumination which alone would place the individual on a new plane of existence — would make him almost a member of a new species. To this is added a state of moral exaltation, an indescribable feeling of elevation, elation, and joyousness, and a quickening of the moral sense, which is fully as striking and more important both to the individual and to the race than is the enhanced intellectual power. With these come, what may be called a sense of immortality, a consciousness of eternal life, not a conviction that he shall have this, but the consciousness that he has it already.' (3)

 

'our descendants will sooner or later reach, as a race, the condition of cosmic consciousness, just as, long ago, our ancestors passed from simple to self consciousness... this step in evolution is even now being made, since it is clear to him both that men with the faculty in question are becoming more and more common and also that as a race we are approaching nearer and nearer to that stage of the self conscious mind from which the transition to the cosmic conscious is effected.' (4)

 

'There are at the present moment impending over us three revolutions, the least of which would dwarf the ordinary historic upheaval called by that name into absolute insignificance. They are: (1) The material, economic and social revolution which will depend upon and result from the establishment of aerial navigation. (2) The economic and social revolution which will abolish individual ownership and rid the earth at once of two immense evils—riches and poverty. And (3) The psychical revolution of which there is here question.' (4)

 

'In contact with the flux of cosmic consciousness all religions known and named to-day will be melted down. The human soul will be revolutionized. Religion will absolutely dominate the race. It will not depend on tradition. It will not be believed and disbelieved... immortality and all glory will exist in the here and now. The evidence of immortality will live in every heart as sight in every eye. Doubt of God and of eternal life will be as impossible as is now doubt of existence; the evidence of each will be the same. Religion will govern every minute of every day of all life. Churches, priests, forms, creeds, prayers, all agents, all intermediaries between the individual man and God will be permanently replaced by direct unmistakable intercourse. Sin will no longer exist nor will salvation be desired. Men will not worry about death or a future, about the kingdom of heaven, about what may come with and after the cessation of the life of the present body. Each soul will feel and know itself to be immortal, will feel and know that the entire universe with all its good and with all its beauty is for it and belongs to it forever. The world peopled by men possessing cosmic consciousness will be as far removed from the world of to-day as this is from the world as it was before the advent of self consciousness.' (5)

 

'Thus we have four distinct stages of intellect, all abundantly illustrated in the animal and human worlds about us~all equally illustrated in the individual growth of the cosmic conscious mind and all four existing together in that mind as the first three exist together in the ordinary human mind. These four stages are, first, the perceptual mind—the mind made up of percepts or sense impressions; second, the mind made up of these and recepts~the so called receptual mind, or in other words the mind of simple consciousness; third, we have the mind made up of percepts, recepts and concepts, called sometimes the conceptual mind or otherwise the self conscious mind—the mind of self consciousness; and, fourth, and last, we have the intuitional mind— the mind whose highest element is not a recept or a concept but an intuition. This is the mind in which sensation, simple consciousness and self consciousness are supplemented and crowned with cosmic consciousness.' (16)

 

'If it has taken the race several hundred thousand years to learn a smattering of the science of humanity since its of self consciousness, so it may take it millions of years to acquire a smattering of the science of God after its acquisition of cosmic consciousness.' (18)

 

'The philosophy of the birth of cosmic consciousness in the individual is very similar to that of the birth of self consciousness. The mind becomes overcrowded (as it were) with concepts and these are constantly becoming larger, more numerous and more and more complex; some day (the conditions being all favorable) the fusion, or what might be called the chemical union, of several of them and of certain moral elements takes place; the result is an intuition and the establishment of the intuitional mind, or, in other words, cosmic consciousness.' (18)

 

'Thus, as the eons pass, has the great trunk of the tree of life grown taller and from time to time shot forth twigs which have grown to branches, and these again to noble limbs, which in their turn have put out twigs and branches, many of them of great size and in number uncountable. We know that the tree has not ceased to grow, that even now, as always, it is putting forth new buds, and that the old shoots, twigs and branches are most of them increasing in size and strength. Shall the growth stop to-day? It does not seem likely. It seems more likely that other limbs and branches undreamed of to-day shall spring from the tree, and that the main trunk which from mere life grew into sensitive life, simple consciousness and self consciousness shall yet pass into still higher forms of life and consciousness.' (53)

 

'first, it may be noted that the new sense does not appear by chance in this man or that. It is necessary for its appearance that an exalted human personality should exist and supply the pre-conditions for its birth. In the great cases especially is there an exceptional development of some or all of the ordinary human faculties... It is probable that an approximation to this evolutionary excellence is necessary in all cases. Then certainly in some, probably in all, cases the person has an exceptional physique—exceptional beauty of build and carriage, exceptionally handsome features, exceptional health, exceptional sweetness of temper, exceptional magnetism.' (61)

Related to Samuel Alexander, Space, Time, and Deity (II Vols.). 1920.
Description:

Book IV, 'Deity' (Vol. II, pp. 341-430):

 

'Now since Time is the principle of growth and Time is infinite, the internal development of the world, which before was described in its simplest terms as the redistribution of moments of Time among points of Space, cannot be regarded as ceasing with the emergence of those finite configurations of space-time which carry the empirical quality of mind. We have to think upon the lines already traced by experience of the emergence of higher qualities, also empirical. There is a nisus in Space-Time which, as it has borne its creatures forward through matter and life to mind, will bear them forward to some higher level of existence. There is nothing in mind which requires us to stop and say this is the highest empirical quality which Time can produce from now throughout the infinite Time to come. It is only the last empirical quality which we who are minds happen to know.' (346)

 

'Deity is some quality not realised but in the process of realisation, is future and not present. How then, it may be asked can the future make itself felt energetically in our minds, draw them towards itslef and satisfy them? Now we must remember that deity is not as such cognised, is not before our minds as a matter of contemplation. The reflective contemplation embodies the feeling and follows on it. All we have for cognition is the world of cognition interpreted byt he noton of infinitude and of its tendency to deity. The world which works upon our religious suggestibility is the actual world, but the actual world contains the seed of its future, though what future forms it will assume is hidden from us, except so far as we can forecast them in spatio-temoral terms. What acts upon us is what is to bring forth deity.' (379)

'Deity is... the next higher empirical quality to mind, which the universe is engaged in bringing to birth. That the universe is pregnant with such a quality we are speculatively assured. What that quality is we cannot know; for we can neither enjoy nor still less contemplate it. Our human altars still are raised to the unknown God. If we could know what deity is, how it feels to be divine, we should first have to have become as gods. What we know of it is but its relation to the other empirical qualities which precede it in time. Its nature we cannot penetrate. We can represent it to ourselves only by analogy. It is fitly described in this analogical manner as the colour of the universe. For colour, we have seen, is a new quality which emerges in material things in attendance on motions of a certain sort. Deity in its turn is a quality which attends upon, or more strictly is equivalent to, previous or lower existences of the order of mind which itself rests on a still lower basis of qualities, and emerges when certain complexities and refinements of arrangement have been reached.' (347)

 

'We cannot tell what is the nature of deity, of our deity, but we can be certain that it is not mind, or if we use the term spirit as equivalent to mind or any quality of the order of mind, deity is not spirit, but something different from it in kind. God, the being which possesses deity, must be also spirit, for according to analogy, deity pre-supposes spirit, just as spirit or mind presupposes in its possessor life, and life physico-chemical material processes. But though God must be spiritual in the same way as he must be living and material and spatio-temporal, his deity is not spirit. To think so would be like thinking that mind is purely life, or life purely physico-chemical. The neural complexity which is equivalent to mind is not merely physiological, but a selected physiological constellation which is the bearer of mind, though it is also physiological, because it has physiological relations to what is purely physiological. That complexity and refinement of spirit which is equivalent to deity is something new, and while it is also spirit it is not merely spirit.' (349)

 

'though the parts are not transformed in the whole, the conception of transformation when understood in a certain sense is legitimate and corresponds to facts. Finites of a lower order are combined to produce a complex which carries a quality of a higher order. Thus physiological complexes of a sufficient complexity carry mind or consciousness. They may be said to be ' transformed' in the consciousness they carry. This is the empirical fact. But in the complex which thus acquires a new quality the parts retain their proper character and are not altered. The physiological elements remain physiological. So does the complex of them; though since it is also psychical, it is not merely physiological but something empirically new. All the chemical substances which exist in the organic body perform their chemical functions. The water in our bodies remains water still. It is the physico-chemical constella- tion which carries life. Thus even when we go beyond bare spatio-temporal forms which are the basis of all finites and consider things with their empirical qualities of colour, life, and the rest, we see that the parts are used up to produce something different from them and transcending them, but, used up as they are, they are not altered or superseded but subserve. In this special sense there is 'transformation ' of the parts in building up a higher existence, but the parts remain what they were.

In the same way a complex of parts which are of the nature of mind becomes the bearer of a quality of deity higher than mind or spirit. In this sense there is transformation of lower quality into deity.' (370)

 

'The religious emotion or appetite has no specific organ through which it works... [it] depends upon the whole make-up or constitution of the mind and body, and is the response of it to the whole of  reality in its nisus towards a new quality. In that forward movement due to the onward sweep of time our minds with their substructure of body are caught, and our religious response is at once the mar that we are involved in that nisus, and that our minds contribute in their part towards it. The world in its bearing towards a new empirical quality may be concealed from the cognitive mind, for though we are always in cognitive compresence with what is outside us, neither can the new empirical quality be contemplated, for we know not what it is, nor even enjoyed, since it is higher than mind. It makes itself felt in the religious sense which thus discovers the world it sees to be clothed in divinity. For the world is not merely what it is for intellect alone; its nisus towards what is higher enters into its constitution, and as impregnated with this tendency it affects the mind by ways other than cognition, though interpretable in the ways of cognition. The whole world with its real tendency to deity stirs in us from the depths of our nature a vague endeavour or desire which shadows forth its object. Then intellect comes into play, and discovers in detail the characters of this object, and finds at last what it truly is, the tendency of the world forwards towards a new quality.' (377)

 

 

 

Related to Walt Whitman, Democratic Vistas. c. 1870.
Description:

'Admitting all this, with the priceless value of our political institutions, general suflfrage, (and fully acknowledging the latest, widest opening of the doors,) I say that, far deeper than these, what finally and only is to make of our western world a nationality superior to any hither known, and outtopping the past, must be vigorous, yet unsuspected Literatures, perfect personalities and sociologies, original, transcendental, and expressing (what, in highest sense, are not yet express'd at all,) democracy and the modern. With these, and out of these, I promulgate new races of Teachers, and of perfect Women, indispensable to endow the birth-stock of a New World.' (4)

 

'I submit, therefore, that the fruition of democracy, on aught like a grand scale, resides altogether in the future. As, under any profound and comprehensive view of the gorgeous-composite feudal world, we see in it, through the long ages and cycles of ages, the results of a deep, integral, human and divine principle, or fountain, from which issued laws, ecclesia, manners, institutes, costumes, personalities, poems, (hitherto unequalled,) faithfully partaking of their source, and indeed only arising either to betoken it, or to furnish parts of that varied-flowing display, whose centre was one and absolute — so, long ages hence, shall the due historian or critic make at least an equal retrospect, an equal history for the democratic principle. It too must be adorn'd, credited with its results — then, when it, with imperial power, through amplest time, has dominated mankind — has been the source and test of all the moral, esthetic, social, political, and religious expressions and institutes of the civilized world — has begotten them in spirit and in form, and has carried them to its own unprecedented heights — has had, (it is possible,) monastics and ascetics, more numerous, more devout than the monks and priests of all previous creeds — has sway'd the ages with a breadth and rectitude tallying Nature's own — has fashioned, systematized, and triumphantly finished and carried out, in its own interest, and with unparalleled success, a new earth and a new man.' (36-37)

 

[page numbers from Democratic Vistas: And Other Papers (1888)]

Related to William Morris, News From Nowhere. 1890.
Description:

Morris's 'News From Nowhere' is primarily concerned with imagining the organization and activities of a society that has taken on the ideals of the arts and crafts movement. The psychologies of the inhabitants of this future utopia are however characterized as in most respects identical to those existent in the late nineteenth century. Nevertheless, there is some discussion of the different attitudes and beliefs that Morris believes would prevail given the realisation of his ideal.

For example, the subject of love arises during a conversation between the protagonist (or 'guest'), and an elder statesman of the new society. The statesman makes it clear that although men (and, by implication, women) still suffer from the trials and tribulations relating to it, they are able to accept these with greater equinamity than in times past:

'we of these generations are strong and healthy of body, and live easily; we pass our lives in reasonable strife with nature, exercising not one side of ourselves only, but all sides, taking the keenest pleasure in all the life of the world.  So it is a point of honour with us not to be self-centred; not to suppose that the world must cease because one man is sorry; therefore we should think it foolish, or if you will, criminal, to exaggerate these matters of sentiment and sensibility: we are no more inclined to eke out our sentimental sorrows than to cherish our bodily pains; and we recognise that there are other pleasures besides love-making.  You must remember, also, that we are long-lived, and that therefore beauty both in man and woman is not so fleeting as it was in the days when we were burdened so heavily by self-inflicted diseases.  So we shake off these griefs in a way which perhaps the sentimentalists of other times would think contemptible and unheroic, but which we think necessary and manlike.  As on the other hand, therefore, we have ceased to be commercial in our love-matters, so also we have ceased to be artificially foolish.  The folly which comes by nature, the unwisdom of the immature man, or the older man caught in a trap, we must put up with that, nor are we much ashamed of it; but to be conventionally sensitive or sentimental—my friend, I am old and perhaps disappointed, but at least I think we have cast off some of the follies of the older world.”

He paused, as if for some words of mine; but I held my peace: then he went on: “At least, if we suffer from the tyranny and fickleness of nature or our own want of experience, we neither grimace about it, nor lie.  If there must be sundering betwixt those who meant never to sunder, so it must be: but there need be no pretext of unity when the reality of it is gone: nor do we drive those who well know that they are incapable of it to profess an undying sentiment which they cannot really feel: thus it is that as that monstrosity of venal lust is no longer possible, so also it is no longer needed.  Don’t misunderstand me.  You did not seemed shocked when I told you that there were no law-courts to enforce contracts of sentiment or passion; but so curiously are men made, that perhaps you will be shocked when I tell you that there is no code of public opinion which takes the place of such courts, and which might be as tyrannical and unreasonable as they were.  I do not say that people don’t judge their neighbours’ conduct, sometimes, doubtless, unfairly.  But I do say that there is no unvarying conventional set of rules by which people are judged; no bed of Procrustes to stretch or cramp their minds and lives; no hypocritical excommunication which people are forced to pronounce, either by unconsidered habit, or by the unexpressed threat of the lesser interdict if they are lax in their hypocrisy.  Are you shocked now?”

“N-o—no,” said I, with some hesitation.  “It is all so different.”

“At any rate,” said he, “one thing I think I can answer for: whatever sentiment there is, it is real—and general; it is not confined to people very specially refined.  I am also pretty sure, as I hinted to you just now, that there is not by a great way as much suffering involved in these matters either to men or to women as there used to be."' (81-83)

As this quote makes clear, Morris is less concerned with imagining ways in which human psychology might evolve in the future, than with imagining a situation in which the concerns of those living in the late nineteenth century might be ameliorated and made satisfactory to those that hold them. Love is the much same as it was in 1890, but men and women have learnt to organize their lives in such as way as to make its vagaries less painful to those that experience it. An useful comparison in this regard is George Bernard Shaw's 'Back to Methusela' (1921)

Related to William Kingdon Clifford, Lectures and Essays (2 Vols.). London, 1879.
Description:

'Cosmic Emotion' (Vol. II), pp. 253-285:

 

'By a cosmic emotion - the phrase is Mr. Henry Sidgwick's - I mean an emotion which is felt in regard to the universe or sum of things, viewed as a cosmos or order. There are two kinds of cosmic emotion one having  reference to the Macrocosm or universe surrounding and containing us, the other relating to the Microcosm or universe of our own souls. When we try to put together the most general conceptions that we can form about the great aggregate of events that are always going on, to strike a sort of balance among the feelings which these events produce in us, and to add to these the feeling of vastness associated with an attempt to represent the whole of existence, then we experience a cosmic emotion of the first kind... If, on the other hand, we consider the totality of our own actions and of the feelings that go with them or spring out of them, if we frame the highest possible generalization to express the character of those which we call good, and if we contemplate this with the feeling of vastness which belongs to that which concerns all things that all men do, we shall experience a cosmic emotion of the second kind.' (253-254)

 

'The character of the emotion with which men contemplate the world, the temper in which they stand in the presence of the immensities and the eternities, must depend first of all on what they think the world is. The theory of the universe, the view of things, prevalent at any time and place, will rouse appropriate feelings in those who contemplate it; not the same in all, for temperament varies with the individual, and the same facts stir differently different souls, yet so that, on the whole, the character of cosmic emotion depends on the nature of cosmic ideas.

When, therefore, the inevitable progress of knowledge has changed the prevalent cosmic ideas, so that the world as we know it is not the world which our fathers knew, the oldest cosmic emotions are no longer found to fit.' (254-255)

 

'We always know a little more than our imaginations have thoroughly pictured. To some minds there is hope and renewing of youth in the sense that the last word is not yet spoken, that greater mysteries yet lie behind the veil... But others see in the clearer and wider vision that approaches them the end of all beauty and joy in the earth; because their old feelings are not suited to the new learning, they think that learning can stir no feelings at all.' (255-256)

 

'Whatever conception... we can form of the external cosmos must be regarded as only provisional and not final, as waiting revision when we shall have pushed the bounds of our knowledge further away into time and space. It must always, therefore, have a character of incompleteness about it, a want, a stretching out for something better to come, the expectation of a further lesson from the universal teacher, Experience...

But again, this incompleteness does not belong to our conception of the external cosmos alone, but to that of the internal cosmos also. Human nature is fluent, it is constantly though slowly changing, and the universe of human action is changing also. Whatever general conception we may form of good actions and bad ones, we must regard it as quite valid only for ourselves ; the next generation will have a slightly modified form of it, but not the same thing. The Kantian universality is no longer possible. No maxim can be valid at all times and places for all rational beings ; a maxim valid for us can only be valid for such portions of the human race as are practically identical with ourselves.' (269-270)

 

'So far our cosmic conception is external. Starting with organic action, as that which has affected the evolution of life and all the works of life, we have found it to have the character of freedom, or action from within, and in the case of the social organism we have seen that freedom is the organic action of society as such, which is what we call the Republic. The Republic is the visible embodiment and personification of freedom in its highest external type.

But the Republic is itself still further personified, in a way that leads us back with new light to the conception of the internal cosmos. The practice of band-work, or comradeship, the organic action of society, has so moulded the nature of man as to create in it two specially human faculties the conscience and the intellect... Conscience and reason form an inner core in the human mind, having an origin and a nature distinct from the merely animal passions and perceptions ; they constitute the soul or spirit of man, the universal part in every one of us. In these are bound up, embalmed and embodied, all the struggles and searchings of spirit of the countless generations which have made us what we are. Action which arises out of that inner core, which is prompted by conscience and guided by reason, is free in the highest sense of all; this at last is good in the ethical sense. And yet, when we act with this most perfect freedom, it may be said that it is not we that act, but Man that worketh in us.' (283-284)