Читать книгу A New Era of Thought - Charles Howard Hinton - Страница 10

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Both in science and in morals there is an important distinction to be drawn between theory and practice. A knowledge of chemistry does not consist in the intellectual appreciation of different theories and principles, but in being able to act in accordance with the facts of chemical combination, so that by means of the appliances of chemistry practical results are produced. And so in morals—the theoretic acquaintance with the principles of human action may consist with a marked degree of ignorance of how to act amongst other human beings.

Now the use of the word “learn” has been much restricted to merely theoretic studies. It requires to be enlarged to the scientific meaning. And to know, should include practice in actual manipulation.

Let us take an instance. We all know what justice is, and any child can be taught to tell the difference between acting justly and acting unjustly. But it is a different thing to teach them to act with justice. Something is done which affects them unpleasantly. They feel an impulse to retaliate. In order to see what justice demands they have to put their personal feeling on one side. They have to get rid of those conditions under which they apprehended the effects of the action at first, and they have to look on it from another point of view. Then they have to act in accordance with this view.

Now there are two steps—one an intellectual one of understanding, one a practical one of carrying out the view. Neither is a moral step. One demands intelligence, the other the formation of a habit, and this habit can be inculcated by precept, by reward and punishment, by various means. But as human nature is constituted, if the habit of justice is inculcated it touches a part of the being. There is an emotional response. We know but little of a human being, but we can safely say that there are depths in it, beyond the feelings of momentary resentment and the stimulus of pleasurable or painful sensation, to which justice is natural.

How little adequate is our physical knowledge of a human being as a bodily frame to explain the fact of human life. Now and again we see one of these isolated beings bound up in another, as if there was an undiscovered physical bond between them. And in all there is this sense of justice—a kind of indwelling verdict of the universal mind, if we may use such an expression, in virtue of which a man feels not as a single individual but as all men.

With respect to justice, it is not only necessary to take the view of one other person than oneself, but that of many. There may be justice which is very good justice from the point of view of a party, but very bad justice from the point of view of a nation. And if we suppose an agency outside the human race, gifted with intelligence, and affecting the race, in the way for instance of causing storms or disturbances of the ground, in order to judge it with justice we should have to take a standpoint outside the race of men altogether. We could not say that this agency was bad. We should have to judge it with reference to its effect on other sentient beings.

There are some words which are often used in contrast with each other—egoism and altruism; and each seems to me unmeaning except as terms in a contrast.

Let us take an instance. A boy has a bag of cakes, and is going to enjoy them by himself. His parent stops him, and makes him set up some stumps and begin to learn to play cricket with another boy. The enjoyment of the cakes is lost—he has given that up; but after a little while he has a pleasure which is greater than that of cakes in solitude. He enters into the life of the game. He has given up, or been forced to give up, the pleasure he knew, and he has found a greater one. What he thought about himself before was that he liked cakes, now what he thinks about himself is that he likes cricket. Which of these is the true thought about himself? Neither, probably, but at any rate it is more near the truth to say that he likes the cricket. If now we use the word self to mean that which a person knows of himself, and it is difficult to see what other meaning it can have, his self as he knew it at first was thwarted, was given up, and through that he discovered his true self. And again with the cricket; he will make the sacrifice of giving that up, voluntarily or involuntarily, and will find a truer self still.

In general there is not much difficulty in making a boy find out that he likes cricket; and it is quite possible for him to eat his cakes first and learn to play cricket afterwards—the cricket will not come to him as a thwarting in any sense of what he likes better. But this ease in entering in to the pursuit only shows that the boy’s nature is already developed to the level of enjoying the game. The distinct moral advance would come in such a case when something which at first was hard to him to do was presented to him—and the hardness, the unpleasantness is of a double kind, the giving up of a pursuit or indulgence to which he is accustomed, and the exertion of forming the habits demanded by the new pursuit.

Now it is unimportant whether the renunciation is forced or willingly taken. But as a general rule it may be laid down, that by giving up his own desires as he feels them at the moment, to the needs and advantage of those around him, or to the objects which he finds before him demanding accomplishment, a human being passes to the discovery of his true self on and on. The process is limited by the responsibilities which a man finds come upon him.

The method of moral advance is to acquire a practical knowledge; he must first see what the advantage of some one other than himself would be, and then he must act in accordance with that view of things. Then having acted and formed a habit, he discovers a response in himself. He finds that he really cares, and that his former limited life was not really himself. His body and the needs of his body, so far as he can observe them, externally are the same as before; but he has obtained an inner and unintellectual, but none the less real, apprehension of what he is.

Thus altruism, or the sacrifice of egoism to others, is followed by a truer egoism, or assertion of self, and this process flashed across by the transcendent lights of religion, wherein, as in the sense of justice and duty, untold depths in the nature of man are revealed entirely unexpressed by the intellectual apprehension which we have of him as an animal frame of a very high degree of development, is the normal one by which from childhood a human being develops into the full responsibilities of a man.

Now both in science and in conduct there are self elements. In science, getting rid of the self elements means a truer apprehension of the facts about one; in conduct, getting rid of the self elements means obtaining a truer knowledge of what we are—in the way of feeling more strongly and deeply and being bound and linked in a larger scale.

Thus without pretending to any scientific accuracy in the use of terms, we can assign a certain amount of meaning to the expression—getting rid of self elements. And all that we can do is to take the rough idea of this process, and then taking our special subject matter, apply it. In affairs of life experiments lead to disaster. But happily science is provided wherein the desire to put theories into practice can be safely satisfied—and good results sometimes follow. Were it not for this the human race might before now have been utopiad from off the face of the earth.