The Forerunners Part 16

Thus war is endemic, and every citizen of these democracies, every worker ant, has to take part in the fighting. In certain species (Pheidole pallidula), the military caste is distinct from the working caste. The soldier takes no part in domestic work, but idles away the days in barracks, with nothing to do save at the times when life has to be staked for the defence of the community.[76] There are no leaders, or at any rate no permanent leaders. We see neither kings nor generals. The expeditionary armies of Polyergus rufescens, which may vary from one hundred thousand to two hundred thousand ants, act in obedience to streams of influence which appear to emanate from small and scattered groups, sometimes in the van and sometimes in the rear. When the army is on the march, the entire column will suddenly halt, remaining indecisive and motionless, as if paralysed. Of a sudden, the initiative will be taken by some small group of ants whose members rush about among the others, striking these on the head; then the temporary leaders start off, and the whole army is in motion once more.

Formica sanguinea is an able tactician. Forel follows Huber in his description of the fighting methods of this species. The insects do not advance in close formation, a la Hindenburg, but in platoons, communicating one with another by orderlies. They do not make a frontal attack; but, after watching the enemy's movements, attempt to take him by surprise on the flank. Their aim, like that of Napoleon, is to concentrate upon a given point at a particular time, to secure there and then the advantage of numbers. Like Napoleon, too, they know how to lower the adversary's morale. Seizing the psychological moment when the enemy's courage or confidence flags, they hurl themselves upon him with irresistible fury, now recking nought of numbers, for they know that at such a time one fighter on their own side is worth a hundred on the other, where panic is rife. Moreover, like good soldiers, their aim is not to kill, so much as to gain the victory and to harvest its fruits.

When the battle is won they post a guard at each exit of the conquered nest. The members of this guard allow the enemy ants to escape, provided these carry nothing away. The victors pillage to the uttermost, but do as little killing as possible.

Between species of equal strength, fighting for frontiers, war is not perennial. After many days of battle and glorious hecatombs, the rival states would appear to recognise that their respective ambitions are unattainable. As if by common consent, the armies withdraw within either side of a frontier, which is accepted by both parties with or without treaty. This frontier is respected much more perfectly than among men, bound merely by "sc.r.a.ps of paper." The citizen ants of the two communities always keep strictly within their borders.

A matter of even greater interest is to note how this war-making instinct originates among our brothers the insects; to study how it develops; and to ascertain whether it is fixed or modifiable. Here Forel's observations and experiments lead to the most remarkable deductions.

J. H. Fabre, in a famous pa.s.sage of _Insect Life_,[77] tells us that "brigandage is the law in the struggle among living beings.... In nature, murder is universal. Everywhere we encounter a hook, a dagger, a spear, a tooth, nippers, pincers, a saw, horrible clamps, ..." But he exaggerates. He has a keen eye for the facts of mutual slaughter and mutual devouring, but he fails to see the facts of mutual aid and a.s.sociated effort. Kropotkin has devoted an admirable book to the study of phenomena of the latter cla.s.s, as manifested throughout nature.[78]

Furthermore, the careful observations of Forel show that in ants the instincts of war and plunder may be modified or overcome by instincts of a contrary character.

First of all, Forel proves that the war-making instinct is not fundamental. This instinct does not exist in the early stages of ant life. Putting together newly hatched ants belonging to three different species, Forel obtained a mixed ant community whose members lived in perfect harmony. The only primitive instinct of newly hatched ants is that for domestic work and the care of larvae. "Not until later do ants learn to distinguish between friend and foe; not until later do they realise that they are members of a single ant community on behalf of which they have to fight."[79]

Forel next presents the fact, even more surprising, that the intensity of the warrior instinct is directly proportional to the size of the collectivity. Two ants of enemy species meeting at a distance from their respective nests or from their own folk, will avoid one another and run away in opposite directions. Even if you come across the armies in full combat, and you remove from the ranks an ant belonging to either side and shut the two by themselves in a small box, they will do one another no harm. If, instead of taking merely two, you shut up a moderate number from either side within a narrow s.p.a.ce, they will fight half-heartedly for a while, but soon cease to struggle, and often end by making friends. In such circ.u.mstances, says Forel, they will never resume the struggle. But put these same ants back among the fighting forces of their respective sides, and separate them by a reasonable distance, so that they might live at peace, and you will see them return to the attack; the individuals which a moment before were avoiding one another with repugnance or fear, will now furiously engage in mutual slaughter.[80] It thus appears that the combative instinct is a collective contagion.

Sometimes this epidemic a.s.sumes unmistakably morbid attributes.[81] In proportion as it extends and in proportion as the struggle is prolonged, the fighting rage becomes a positive frenzy. The very same ant, which at the outset was timid, will now be affected with a paroxysm of furious madness. She no longer knows what she is about. She throws herself upon her own companions, kills the slaves that are endeavouring to calm her, bites everything she touches, bites fragments of wood, can no longer find her way. Other members of the community, slaves as a rule, have to surround such a frenzied worker by twos and threes; they seize her by the legs and caress her with their antennae until she comes to herself, has recovered as I might say "her reason." Why not? Had she not lost it?

We have hitherto been dealing exclusively with general phenomena, those which obey fairly rigid laws. Now we are faced with special phenomena wherein initiative conflicts in the most peculiar way with the instinct of the species, and, which is yet more curious, in the end causes instinct to stray from its appointed path, and even to die out altogether.

Forel places in a jar some ants of enemy species, the sanguinea and the pratensis. After a few days of warfare, followed by a sullen armistice, he introduces a newly hatched pratensis which is very hungry. She runs to those of her own species begging them to feed her. The pratenses fob her off. Then the poor innocent appeals to the enemies of her species, the sanguineae, and, after the manner of ants, she licks the mouth of two among them. The two sanguineae are so touched by this gesture, which turns their instinct topsy-turvy, that they disgorge their honeyed store and feed the young enemy. Thenceforward all is well. An offensive and defensive alliance is formed between the little pratensis and the sanguineae against the ants of the young one's own species. The alliance becomes irrevocable.

Let me adduce another example; the results of a common danger. Forel places in a bag a nest of sanguineae and another of pratenses. He shakes them together, and leaves them in the bag for an hour. Thereafter he opens the bag and places it in direct contact with an artificial nest.

At first we witness a general state of confusion, a delirium of fear.

The ants cannot recognise one another apart; they show their mandibles, and then sidle away in a panic. But by degrees calm is restored. The sanguineae begin by removing the pupae, taking indifferently those of both species. Some of the pratenses follow their example. From time to time fights take place, but these are merely single combats, and they grow less and less fierce. From the next day onwards, all work together. In four days the pact is sealed; the pratenses disgorge food to the sanguineae. At the end of a week, Forel transports them to the neighbourhood of an abandoned ant-hill. They settle in, helping one another in the house-moving, carrying one another, and so forth. No more than a few isolated individuals of the respective species, irreconcilable nationalists no doubt, keep up their sacred enmity, and end by killing one another. A fortnight later, the mixed community is flouris.h.i.+ng; perfect concord prevails. The summit of the ant-hill, which at ordinary times is covered with pratenses for the most part, reddens with the martial sanguineae directly danger threatens the common state.

Next month, Forel, carrying the experiment a stage further, went to the old nest for a number of the pratenses and put them down just outside the hill of the mixed community. The newcomers promptly fell upon the sanguineae. But these latter defended themselves without animosity, merely knocking the aggressors head over heels, and then letting them alone. The pratenses could not make it out. As for the other pratenses, those belonging to the mixed community, they avoided their sometime sisters, would not fight with them, but carried the pupae into the nest.

The hostility was all on the side of the newcomers. Next day some of them had been admitted as members of the mixed community, and ere long relations were permanently established on a peace footing. Not in a single instance did the pratenses of the mixed community join with the newcomers to attack the sanguineae. The alliance between pratenses and sanguineae was stronger than the racial brotherhood of the pratenses; the enmity between the two hostile species had been permanently overcome.[82]

Such examples suffice to show how grave is the mistake of those who believe that instincts are quasi-sacred, and who, after they have included the fighting instinct in this category, regard it as imposed by fate upon all living animals from the lowest to the highest. For, in the first place, instinct varies greatly in its cogency. We find it to be non-modifiable or modifiable, absolute or relative, permanent or transient, not merely as we pa.s.s from one genus to another, but within the same genus as we pa.s.s from species to species,[83] and within the same species as we pa.s.s from group to group. Instinct is not a starting point, but is itself a product of evolution. Like evolution in general, it is progressive. The most ingrained instinct is merely an instinct of great antiquity. The observations quoted above suffice to show that the war-making instinct is less ingrained, less primitive, than people are apt to suppose, for even among the most combative species of ants, it can be resisted, modified, and restrained. If these humble insects are able to react against it, if they can modify their natures, if they can replace wars of conquest by peaceful cooperation, if they can subst.i.tute allied states (or, yet more remarkable, mixed and united states) for enemy states--should man be willing to avow himself more enslaved than they by his worst instincts, and less able than they to master these instincts? It is sometimes said that war lowers us to the level of beasts. War reduces us below that level, if we show ourselves less capable of freeing ourselves from the fighting spirit than are certain animal societies. It would be rather humiliating to be compelled to admit their superiority. Chi lo sa?... For my part I am far from certain that man is, as he is said to be, the lord of creation; more often, man is the destructive tyrant. I am sure that in many things he could learn wisdom from these animal societies, older than his own and infinitely diversified.

I do not propose to prophesy whether humanity will succeed (any more than the ant communities) in gaining the mastery over blind instinct.

But what strikes me, as I read Auguste Forel, is the conviction that no more in man than in the ants is such a victory radically impossible. To recognize that a particular advance is not impracticable even though we should fail to realise that advance, seems to me more encouraging than the belief that, whatever we attempt, we shall run our heads against a stone wall. The window is closed. It is thick with grime. Perhaps we shall never be able to open it. But between us and the sunlit air there is nothing but a pane of gla.s.s, which we can break if we will.[84]

_June 1, 1918._

"Revue Mensuelle," Geneva, August, 1918.

XXII

ON BEHALF OF THE INTERNATIONAL OF THE MIND

This chapter relates to the plan for an Inst.i.tute of the Nations, suggested by Gerhard Gran, professor at the University of Christiania, writing in the "Revue Politique Internationale" of Lausanne. My reply was first published in the same periodical, under the t.i.tle "Pour une culture universelle" (On behalf of a universal civilisation).

Gerhard Gran's broad-minded appeal cannot fail to arouse echoes. I have read it with lively sympathy. He displays the virtue of modesty, so rare in our day. At a time when all the nations are making an arrogant parade of a superior mission of order or justice, organisation or liberty, a mission which authorises them to impose on other nations their own hallowed individuality (for each looks upon itself as the chosen people), we draw a breath of relief when we hear one of them, by the voice of Gerhard Gran, speaking not of its rights, but of its "debts."

How n.o.ble, too, are his tones of frankness and grat.i.tude!

"Among all the nations, ours is perhaps the one which has the greatest duty to perform, for our nation owes most to the others. What we have gained from international science is incalculable.... Our debts are manifest in all directions.... When we draw up our scientific balance-sheet in account with the rest of the world, the credit side is meagre. In this respect we have to speak chiefly of our pa.s.sive advantages, and our modesty forbids us to refer to our active contributions."

How refres.h.i.+ng is such modesty! How refres.h.i.+ng is it in this world-crisis of delirious vanity! Nevertheless Ibsen's fellow-countrymen are ent.i.tled to hold their heads high among their European brethren; for more than any other writer the great Norwegian recluse has stamped with his seal both the drama and modern thought. The eyes of Young France turned towards him; the writer of these lines asked counsel of him.

All the nations are debtors one to another. Let us pool our debts and our possessions.

If there are any to-day for whom modesty is befitting, it is the intellectuals. The part they have played in this war has been abominable, unpardonable. Not merely did they do nothing to lessen the mutual lack of understanding, to limit the spread of hatred; with rare exceptions, they did everything in their power to disseminate hatred and to envenom it. To a considerable extent, this war was their war.

Thousands of brains were poisoned by their murderous ideologies.

Overweeningly self-confident, proud, implacable, they sacrificed millions of young lives to the triumph of the phantoms of their imagination. History will not forget.

Gerhard Gran expresses the fear that personal cooperation between intellectuals of the belligerent lands may prove impossible for many years. If he is thinking of the generation of those who are over fifty, of those who stayed at home and waged a war of words in the learned societies, the universities, and the editorial offices, I fancy that the Norwegian writer is not mistaken. There is little chance that these intellectuals will ever join hands. I should say that none of them will do so, were I not familiar with the brain's astounding faculty for forgetting, were I not familiar with this pitiful and yet salutary weakness, by which the mind is not deceived, but which is essential to its continued existence. But in the present case, oblivion will be difficult. The intellectuals have burned their boats. At the outset of the war it was still possible to hope that some of those who had been carried away by the blind pa.s.sion of the opening days, would be able within a few months frankly to admit their mistake. They would not do so. Not one of them has done so on either side of the frontier. It was even possible to note that in proportion as the disastrous consequences to European civilisation became apparent, those whose mission it was to act as guardians of that civilisation, those upon whose shoulders part of the responsibility weighed, instead of admitting their mistake, did all they could to increase their own infatuation. How, then, can we hope, when the war is over, and when the disasters to which it will have led will have become unmistakable, that the intellectuals will curb their pride and will constrain themselves to say, "We were wrong"?--To ask this would be to ask too much. The older generation, I fear, will have to endure to the last its sickness of mind and its obstinacy. On this side there is little hope. We can only wait until the older generation has died out.

Those who wish to reknit the relations among the peoples, must turn their hopes towards the other generation, that of those who bleed in the armies. May they be preserved! They have been ruthlessly thinned out by the sickle of war. They might even be annihilated if the war should be prolonged and extended, as may happen, for all things are possible.

Mankind stands, like Hercules, at the parting of the ways. One of these ways leads (if Asia takes a hand in the game, and accentuates yet further the characteristics of hideous destruction in which Germany has set an example inevitably followed by the other combatants) to the suicide of Europe.--But at the present hour we have still the right to hope that the young men of Europe, now enrolled in the armies, will survive in sufficient numbers to fulfil the mission that will devolve on them after the war, the mission of reconciling the thoughts of the enemy nations. In either camp, I know a number of independent spirits, who look forward, when peace is signed, to realising this intellectual communion. They propose to except from this communion none but those who, be it in their own or be it in the other camp, have prost.i.tuted thought to the work of hatred. When I reflect on these young men, I am firmly convinced (and herein I differ from Gerhard Gran) that after the war the minds of all lands will inter-penetrate one another far more effectively than they have ever done before. The nations which knew nothing of one another, or which saw one another only in the form of contemptuous caricatures, have learned during the last four years, in the mud of the trenches, and at grips with death, that they are the same suffering flesh. All are enduring the same ordeal, and in it they become brothers. This sentiment continues to grow. For when we attempt to foresee the changes which, after the war, will occur in the relations.h.i.+ps between the nations, we do not sufficiently realise the extent to which the war will lead to other upheavals, which may well modify the very essence of the nations. Whatever may be the immediate upshot of happenings in Russia, the example of the New Russia will not fail to have its influence upon the other peoples. An intimate unity is becoming established in the soul of the peoples. It is as if they were connected by gigantic roots, spreading underground regardless of frontiers.--As for the intellectuals who, sitting apart from the common people, are not directly swept along by this social current, they none the less feel its influence by intuition and sympathy. Notwithstanding the efforts which, during these four years, have been made to break off all contact between the writers in the two camps, I know that in both, on the morrow of the peace, international magazines and other publications will be founded. I have first-hand information concerning such schemes, initiated by young writers, soldiers at the front, men permeated with the European spirit. Among those of my own generation, there are a few who will give wholehearted a.s.sistance to their younger brethren. In our view, we shall in this way serve, not merely the cause of mankind, but the cause of our own land, far better than that cause will be served by the evil counsellors who preach armed isolation. Every country which shuts itself apart p.r.o.nounces its own death-sentence. Gone for ever are the days when the young and tumultuous energies of the European nations needed, for their clarification, to be surrounded by part.i.tion walls.--Let me quote a few words uttered by Jean Christophe in his riper age:

"I neither admire nor dread the nationalism of the present time. It will pa.s.s away with the present time; it is pa.s.sing, it has already pa.s.sed.

It is but a rung in the ladder. Climb to the top.... Every nation felt [before the war] the imperious necessity of gathering its forces and making up its balance-sheet. For the last hundred years all the nations have been transformed by their mutual intercourse and the immense contributions of all the brains of the universe, building up new morality, new knowledge, new faith. Every man must examine his conscience, and know exactly what he is and what he has, before he can enter with the rest into the new age. A new age is coming. Humanity is on the point of signing a new lease of life. Society is on the point of springing into vigour with new laws. It is Sunday to-morrow. We are all balancing our accounts for the week, setting our houses in order, making them clean and tidy, so that, joining together, we may go into the presence of our common G.o.d and enter into a new covenant with Him."

The war will prove (even against our will) to have been the anvil upon which will have been forged the unity of the European soul.

It is my hope that this intellectual communion will not be restricted to the European peninsula, but will extend to Asia, to the two Americas, and to the great islets of civilisation spread over the rest of the globe. It is absurd that the nations of western Europe should pride themselves upon the discovery of profound differences, at the very time when they have never resembled one another more closely in merits and defects; at a time when their thought and their literature are least notable for distinctive characteristics; when everywhere there becomes sensible a monotonous levelling of intelligence; when on all hands we discern individualities that are dishevelled, threadbare, limp. I will venture to say that all of them, with their united efforts, are incompetent to give us the hope of that mental renovation to which the world is ent.i.tled after this formidable convulsion. We must go to Russia, which has doors thrown wide open towards the eastern world, for there only will our faces be freshened by the new currents which are blowing in every department of thought.

Let us widen the concept of humanism, dear to our forefathers, though its meaning has been narrowed down to the signification of Greek and Latin manuals. In every age, states, universities, academies, all the conservative forces of the mind, have endeavoured to make humanism in this narrower sense a dike against the onslaughts of the new spirit, in philosophy, in morals, in aesthetics. The dike has burst. The framework of a privileged culture has been broken. To-day we have to accept humanism in its widest signification, embracing all the spiritual forces of the whole world. What we need is, panhumanism.

It is our hope that this ideal, formulated here and there by a few leading minds, or heralded by the foundation while the war is yet in progress of centres for the study of universal civilisation,[85] shall be boldly adopted as its ensign by the international academy, in the foundation of which I hope (with Gerhard Gran) that Norway will take the initiative.

I note that Gerhard Gran seems, like Professor Fredrik Stang, to limit his ambitions to the foundation of an inst.i.tute for scientific research, for in his view science is in its essence more international than art and letters. He writes:

"In art and literature we may, in case of need, discuss the advantages and disadvantages resulting from the isolation of one nation from the rest, or from the antagonism of human groups. In science, such a discussion is absurd. The kingdom of science is the whole world.... The atmosphere indispensable to science has nothing whatever to do with national conflicts."

I think that this distinction is not so well founded as it may seem. No domain of mental activity has been more disastrously involved in the war than the domain of science. Whereas art and letters have only too often been accessory stimulants of the crime, science furnished the war with its weapons, did its utmost to render them more atrocious, to widen the bounds of suffering and cruelty. I may add that even in time of peace I have always been struck by the bitterness of national sentiment displayed by men of science. Those of every nation are fond of accusing their foreign colleagues of stealing their best discoveries and forgetting to acknowledge the source. In a word, science shares in the evil pa.s.sions which corrode art and letters.

On the other hand, if science needs the collaboration of all the nations, to art and letters to-day it is no less advantageous that they should abandon a position of "splendid isolation." Without speaking of the technical advances which, in painting and music, have during the course of the nineteenth century and of the one which has begun so badly brought such sudden and enormous enrichment to the aesthetics of sight and hearing--apart from such considerations--the influence of one philosopher, one thinker, one writer, can modify the whole literature of an epoch, switching the mind on to a new road in psychological, moral, aesthetic, or social research. If any one wish to be isolated, isolated let him be! But the republic of the mind tends to enlarge its frontiers day by day. The greatest men are those who know how to embrace and fuse in a single vigorous personality the wealth that is dispersed or latent in the soul of all mankind.

Let us refrain, therefore, from limiting the idea of internationalism to the field of science. Let us give the fullest possible amplitude to the scheme. Let us form a world-wide Inst.i.tute of Art, Letters and Science.

Moreover, I do not think that this foundation could continue isolated.

No longer, to-day, can the internationalism of culture remain the luxury of a few privileged persons. The practical value of an Inst.i.tute of Nations would be small, unless the masters were a.s.sociated with their disciples in the same stream, unless all the levels of culture were permeated with the same spirit.

That is why I greet, as a fruitful initiative and a happy symptom, the recent foundation in Zurich, by the university students of that city, of an International a.s.sociation of Students (Internationaler Studentenbund). Let me quote from its program.

"Painfully affected by the great ordeal of the war, academic youth has realised the peculiar social responsibilities enjoined by the privileges of a studious life, and desires to find a remedy for the deeper causes of the evil.... The a.s.sociation will endeavour to bring together those of all countries who are in close touch with university life, to unite them in a common faith in the advantages of the free development of the mind. It groups them for the struggle against the growing empery of mechanism and militarism in all the manifestations of life.... It hopes to realise the ideal of universities which shall remain centres of higher culture, in the service of truth alone, unsullied shrines of scientific research, absolutely independent in matters of opinion, paying no attention to selfish aims or to cla.s.s interests."