THE SORRY SCHEME OF THINGS
Bergen Evans
The assurance in the first chapter of Genesis that God, after making all living things, “saw that it was good” has proved a pitfall to those who believe that their conception of good and God’s must of necessity be identical.
In earlier times when the companion assurance that man was to “have dominion . . . over every living thing” was interpreted to mean that all living things were to serve his ends, the “goodness” of an animal was estimated on the basis of its usefulness. By this standard domesticated animals were very good. Wild fowl, fish, and the smaller edible mammals were good. Dangerous wild animals had only the limited value of supplying pelts, and many creatures, such as snakes, ants and grasshoppers, seemed to have been designed solely for their moral value, as patterns of vice or virtue
Heretics challenged this interpretation by pointing out that the evil some animals did greatly outweighed any good that they could possibly do, but the orthodox vindicated Providence by insisting that all things had their place in “the great chain of being” and that much that in itself seemed evil or futile was a necessary part of a larger pattern which was good. (Saint Augustine says that wild animals exist to punish men, to test them, to exercise them, or to instruct them.)
The extent to which such ratiocinations were carried is rather startling to the modern mind which has found inscrutability to be the most prominent of the divine attributes. Pope’s hearty assurance, for example, that man doesn’t need a bear’s fur to keep him warm because God has given him intelligence and skill enough to shoot the bear and skin it, fails to convey the comfort in the twentieth century that it possibly did in the eighteenth. We have an uneasy suspicion that fur-bearing animals grow their skins primarily for their own convenience.
Our grandfathers, however, were free from such enervating doubts. They were able to construct a more “meaningful” universe than we can permit ourselves to imagine, though they had to make an effort now and then to get all the pieces of the puzzle to fit together. Thus when Captain William Scoresby, D. D., who a century ago combined theology and whaling, became agitated over the billions of jellyfish that he observed in the Greenland seas, his problem was to fit them into the anthropocentric pattern. Superficially they seemed a waste of protoplasm, but since his commercial habits of thought did not permit him to conceive of God as being wasteful, he was forced to find some other explanation of His purpose in furnishing such a profusion of life in a region so remote from the habitations of men.
Reflection soon made it clear. The jellyfish were put there, he decided, in order to feed the herring which feed the seal, which feed the polar bears which, if they could not get food, might come south and “incumber regions now affording products useful for the subsistence of man.” Furthermore, the medusae feed the whales which supply us with whale oil (wherewith we may read God’s word by night as well as by day) and whalebone (whereof are made corsets to prolong our illusions as to the divinity of the human form.)
Thus the eye of faith saw the larger whole, and God was exculpated from the charge of being untidy. The universe was “a most beautiful contrivance,” ingeniously arranged to keep polar bears out of our back yards and to supply us with pickled herring and sealskin coats.
Two years after Dr. Scoresby’s death, however, Darwin published his dreadful book and teleology was forced to abandon these rich surmises and to withdraw to a barren strip of land lying between biology and esthetics. In so far as there is any popular effort today to find evidence of Design in the universe, it is confined to an admiration of the perfection with which creatures are adapted to their environments, and particularly to the fearful and wonderful economy of the human form. Amateur theologians love to contemplate the streamlining of fish, the aerodynamics of birds, the camouflage of natural coloring, and those fortunate functionings which justify faith in the supernatural “wisdom of the body.”
But the evidence upon which they base their belief, though valid, is often fragmentary. They are like optimist in earthquakes who pick their way through ruins and over corpses to squeal with rapture over a statue or a kitten that has by chance survived the general destruction. They do not perceive that all living things are survivors and that the adaptation that has made survival possible is usually the barest minimum. In fact, where there has been more than the minimum it has always, with changing circumstances, proved fatal.
The teleologists argue backwards. Thus Sir Thomas Browne saw Providence in the fact that the course of the sun is such as to give just the degree of heat needed by the vegetation of the various latitudes. That is, it gets very hot in the tropics, where the plants need a great deal of heat, and is cool in the artic where the shrubs and mosses do not. But even the most vociferous arguer from design would hardly advance that as evidence today. He would take it for granted that the vegetation had suited itself to the climate rather than the climate to the vegetation. But he might not be aware of how large a concession to mechanism he had made.
Actually there is a great deal of maladaptation in nature, and what adaptation exists is often more clumsy and ineffectual than anything but observation could lead us to believe. Biologic success, says Bradley, consists for an individual in eating and avoiding being eaten until reproduction is achieved, and for a species in the attainment of a sufficient number of individual successes in each generation to prevent extinction. Yet ever this modest air is rarely achieved. There are more extinct than living species, and few members of any species reach maturity.
A striking illustration of the clumsiness of the evolutionary process is furnished by those of our physical misfortunes – some estimate them at 60 percent of all noninfectious diseases – which may be traced wholly or in part, to our failure to make a perfect adaptation to the upright posture.
When man reared up on his hind legs he gained the free use of his hand, which, it was formerly believed, led to the development of his brain which, it was formerly believed, was worth it. Both of the latter assumptions are now disputed, but no one denies that there are some advantages in the upright posture. There are, however, disadvantages also; disadvantages that would be generally perceived were it not for the concept of the “divinity” of the human form.
The backbone, in its vertical position, is subject to strains and jar and pressures which it – particularly in the intervertebral discs – is not fully adapted to sustain and from this fact proceed a hundred ills that not all the liniment in the world can dash away. The arched foot absorbs some of the shocks, but the foot itself cannot always its burden and millions of flat-footed wretches shuffle along in undignified woe. The pelvis, called on “to serve simultaneously the incomparable functions of pillar and portal.” Made a half-hearted compromise, spreading enough to make women knock-kneed but not enough to prevent squeezing the heads of their children as they emerge. And when we get old and fall where four-footed animals never fall, the pelvis breaks.
The up-ending of the circulatory system brought another train of ills, of which the most conspicuous at least, is varicose veins.
The respiratory system suffered too. During previous eons man had developed a group of sinuses which helped to warm, moisten, and clean the air drawn into his lungs, the sinuses and lungs being so situated as to drain gravitationally in a quadrupedal posture. But now infections commonly begin in the upper respiratory tract and descend into the lungs, with the result that a majority of the human species spends a large part of its time sneezing, coughing, oozing, spitting, weeping and wiping.
The intestines are attached by the mesenteries to the back—an excellent arrangement so long as they and the other viscera were cradled by the ribs and the abdominal muscles. But in the upright posture the innards have a tendency to slump down onto the pelvis, distending the belly, rupturing at the groin and frequently impairing their own functioning.
Meanwhile the busy brain, for whose sake these discomforts are possibly endured, does everything in its power to make them worse. It devises sidewalks and hardwood floors to increase the shocks of walking, and invents girdles, belts, collars, garters and pointed shoes to add to our circulatory troubles. Millions of chimneys and exhausts pollute the air of overcrowded cities to inflame the respiratory system still further. Metaphysical terrors are superimposed upon the terrestrial pains of childbirth. And the poor intestines, victims of a thousand theories, are convulsed by poisonous drugs, drenched with mineral oils, and lacerated by “roughage” until they frequently abandon all effort to function.
Surveying these and other misfortunes, it is not astonishing that man has come to regard himself as a weakling among animals. As a matter of fact, he rather takes pride in it. It is one of his most cherished self-delusions, “Weak in himself,” says Carlyle, in what is perhaps the classic statement of the, “and of small stature, he stands on a basis, at most for the flattest-soled, of some half-square foot, insecurely enough; has to straddle out his legs, lest the very wind supplant him; the steer of the meadow tosses him aloft like a waste rag.” And in more recent times Mr. Arthur Brisbane never tired of reminding the readers of the Hearst papers of their physical inferiority to the great apes. Intellectually, he felt, they are superior to the apes. That was, indeed, the whole point of his comparison: it is by means of his BRAIN that man, weakest of creatures, overcomes BRUTE FORCE!
The facts, however, rob man of the flattering illusion of his own feebleness, for by actual measurement he is one of the largest and most formidable of the animals. Probably 99 percent of all livings things are smaller than he is. Even among the mammals he places in the upper one or two percent. Some biologist go so far as to classify him as a giant, one of those species that have outgrown efficient size and are by that very fact doomed to extinction. This may be too gloomy a view, but there can be no doubt of his comparative hugeness, and, despite his weakening by assuming an upright posture, of his strength. Among living things, all seeking whom they may devour, none will attack him without provocation. There are stories of man-eating tigers, but they are usually of woman- or child-eating tigers. The rhinoceros and the Asiatic sloth bear are said to attack man deliberately, and some claim similar ferocity for the king cobra, but when out of thousands of species only three or four can be found for which such a claim can be made, they are plainly exceptions.
We cannot know for sure how man fared in the “natural” state, but there is reason to believe that a young adult male, toughened by constant exercise in the open, must have been a dangerous antagonist for almost any other animal he was likely to encounter. Even modern men have killed large beasts of prey with their bare hands. Carl Akeley and Stewart Edward White, at different time, were attacked by leopards and both managed to kill the assailants by strangling them. Both men, though vigorous, were past their youthful strength, and both were at the disadvantage of being taken by surprise. There are records of other such encounters.
Man is also one of the swiftest of the animals. In December 1936, Jesse Owens beat a race horse over a hundred-yard course, and in the following September, Forrest Towns, Olympic hurdler, teat a prize cavalry horse, trained as a running jumper, in the 120-yard hurdles, using only five hurdles in order to give the horse’s longer stride a fair chance. In the middle distances the horse will win, but in the extreme distances man’s superior powers of endurance again make him the victor.
The fabled eyesight of the eagle and the lynx are exaggerated. Man’s stereoscopic vision is the best in nature, and he has the use of this and his other physical advantages, despite legends about elephants and whales, longer than any other of the mammals. He outlives almost everything but trees and tortoises. All in all, he is tough and tenacious, and sentimental concern about the hard time he had getting here had better be saved for the countless species he has exterminated. That he consumes the major part of his demonic energies in slaughtering his own kind must be a source of great satisfaction to the shattered remnants of creation.
Weak though he is popularly assumed to be, he is thought to be getting steadily weaker. If Adam was, as legend has it, nine hundred yards tall, the “giants” that the Bible tells us were formerly “in the earth” must have been mighty creatures indeed. By Goliath’s time they had shrunk to mere shrimps, and humanity, obviously, had shrunk even more. And the process is thought to be continuing: “We are not the men our fathers were!”
Morally we may not be, but in measurable size we are their betters. The investigations of Boas, Bowles and other have established beyond question that we are stronger and healthier, on the average, than our parents. All colleges that keep records have noticed that the children of their former students are taller and heavier then their parents were. The class of 1945 at Yale, for instance, was the youngest and the tallest ever to enter that institution up to that time. The same trend has been noticed in those European countries that have required military service for several generations.
That the Yale class was youngest as well as tallest is interesting, because we often hear that we are prolonging immaturity, keeping our young people children beyond the age at which their fathers, in Norman Douglas’ vigorous words, had zestfully warred, wed, risen to great place, and “made provision for a fine progeny of bastards.” But this vision of “a well-spent youth” owes more to imagination than to the census: our children are maturing physically today earlier than at any other time.
Several theories are advanced to explain the assumed deterioration of the race, of which the most popular is that we have been “weakened by soft living.”
This charge is invariably brought against the poor by people in comfortable circumstances. Thus the Revered William Harrison, a snug Elizabethan clergyman, enjoying a rich plurality of church livings, was horrified to note that the laborers ate white bread and no longer slept with “a good round log under their heads” but must needs have “a bolster or pillow,” in consequence of which they were enfeebled. Two centuries later, to pick at random, we find the Reverend Joseph Worton, a genial dilettante who also held plural livings and sometimes placed his ease before his honor, bemoaning the “diseaseful dainties” and “feverish luxury” that were destroying the working people. Our fathers were repeatedly warned by Theodore Roosevelt, a child of wealth, that “swollen, slothful ease and ignoble peace” would be their ruin, and in our own time no one has fulminated more roundly against that pampering which is “rotting” our “biological fiber” than Earnest Hooton, who was comfortable ensconced as a professor in our wealthiest university.
“Soft living” is difficult to define. If it means lolling on cushions and eating a great deal of custard, it probably would produce a degree of flabbiness, but there is no great need to worry. There are not enough cushions to go around, and very few people, even in civilized countries, get what experts consider to be the basic minimum of food. Detailed studies have shown that every rise in the standard of living is accompanied by a rise in the general level of health. School children who were “pampered” in the city of Oslo with a daily meal consisting of a glass of milk, a piece of cheese, a rye biscuit, a piece of buttered whole-wheat bread, half an orange, and a spoonful of cod-liver oil were found to grow markedly taller than other children the same age who were not weakened by such delicacies. Sir John Boyd Orr, in a study of food, health and income in Great Britain, found that the sons of the rich were five inches taller than the sons of the poor at the same age.
The deterioration of the health of the American people so dramatically revealed by the army induction tests was, of course, ascribed to luxury. “Soft Living Between Wars Makes forty-two percent of American Manpower Unfit to Fight,” screamed the headline over the news that rejections for physical disability had increased almost thirty-three percent. But the headline was negated, as headlines often are, by the story under it. The causes for rejection as listed in the order of their importance, by the Office of the Surgeon General of the United States Army, were defective eyes, mental defects, bone defects, syphilis, hernia, diseases of the cardiovascular system, and tuberculosis. And these, whatever their causes, hardly indicate soft living. Some of the syphilis, some of the heart cases, and perhaps a few of the hernias might have been the consequences of injudicious or over strenuous revelry, but that would be about all. Major General George Lull, Deputy Surgeon General of the United States Army, told the American Medical Association that the deterioration of our natural health was in large part due to a lack of proper medical care. But that did not make the headlines.
Confronted with such facts, the alarmist usually insists that it is the moral fiber that is weakened by soft living. But that is equally untenable. If courage and energy and willingness to endure privation indicate moral strength, then luxury again seems to strengthen rather than weaken. Combat pilots and submarine crews, for instance, could hardly be accused of moral weakness. Yet, to a man, they were selected from among the best fed and most carefully reared of our young men, and during their rest periods were treated with special consideration and afforded every permissible comfort.
Stefansson found that “well brought up” young men were the best material for polar explorers because they endured hardship better than sailors or laboring men. They were more cheerful in adversity, willing to go hungry and to eat coarse food, better able to withstand cold and pain, and less given to complaining than those whom poverty had restricted and weakened. The same principle hold, he says, among dogs: the pampered, civilized dog will eat anything; the husky will almost starve to death before he will change a single article of diet.
Upon analysis, the accusation of “soft living” often turns out to mean the doing of anything that detracts from the comforts of the accused—such as accepting home relief, which raises the accuser’s taxes, or demanding higher wages, which lowers his profits. An unusually frank statement of the problem was attributed to a Mr. Albert W. Hilliard, “a wool merchant of Boston,” by the Christian Science Monitor. Mr. Hilliard, just returned from a visit to Mexico, was said by the Monitor to have been “the envy of downtown Boston” because of his “tales of eating seven-course steak dinners for 50 cents, buying land at 67 cents an acre and hiring skilled labor at 40 cents to $1 a day.” The Mexican people, Mr. Hilliard explained, “have not been softened by luxurious habits.”
But what does he mean by softened? After all, who ate those dinners?