They must be murdered, or we shall laugh them away. There is always something that can be said in favor of murder, but in the case of the astronomers that would be willful waste of the stuff for laughter. Orthodox astronomers have said that Leverrier used no mathematical method by which he could have determined the position of Neptune. See Lowell's The Evolution of Worlds, p. 124. By way of stuff for the laugh, I mention that one of these disbelieving astronomers was Lowell.
One time, in a mood of depression, I went to the New York Public Library, and feeling a want for a little, light reading, I put in a slip for Lowell's Memoir on a Trans-Neptunian Planet. I got even more amusement than I had expected.
Just where was this point, determined by Lowell, almost exactly in which his planet was found? The spreadheads— the special articles— over and over in the newspapers of the world— "almost exactly."
Says Lowell, page 105: "Precise determination of its place does not seem possible. A general direction alone is predicable."
The stuff for a laugh that is as satisfactory as murder is in the solemn announcements, by the astronomers, about April Fool's Day, 1930, that they had found Lowell's planet almost exactly in the place, precise determination of which does not seem possible
Their chatter over Lowell's magnificent accuracy in pointing in a general direction—
Then the tack of a thing that showed that it could not have been all this indefiniteness, anyway—
265 years, instead of 3,000 years—
And instead of going the thing was coming.
If they can't tell whether something is coming or going, their solemn announcements upon nearness or farness may be equally laughable.
If by mathematical means Adams and Leverrier did not determine the position of the planet Neptune, or if it was, in an opinion that Lowell quotes, "a happy accident," how account for such happiness, or for this timely and sensational boost to a prestige, if we suspect that it was not altogether an accident?
My expression is that herein I'd typify my idea of organic control which, concealed under human vanity, makes us think that we are doing all things ourselves, gives support to human institutions, when they are timely and are functioning, and then casts its favorites into rout and fiasco, when they have outlived their functioning-period.
If Leverrier really had had powers by which he could have pointed to an unseen planet, that would have been a finality of knowledge that would be support to a prestige that could never be overthrown. Suppose a church had ever been established upon foundations not composed of the stuff of lies and frauds and latent laughter. Let the churchman stand upon other than gibberish and mummery, and there'd be nothing by which to laugh away his despotisms.
Say that, whether it be a notion of organic control, or not, we accept any theory of Growth, or Development, or Evolution—
Then we accept that the solemnest of our existence's phenomena are of a wobbling tissue— rocks of ages that are only hardened muds— or that a lie is the heart of everything sacred—
Because otherwise there could not be Growth, or Development, or Evolution.
Chapter 21
A TREK OF circumstances that kicks up a dust of details— a vast and dirty movement that is powdered with particulars—
The gossip of men and women, and the yells of brats— whether dinner is ever going to be ready, or not— young couples in their nightly sneaks— and what the hell has become of the grease for the wheels?— who's got a match?
It's a wagon train that feels out across a prairie.
A drink of water— a thaw of tobacco— just where to borrow a cupful of flour— and yet, even though at its time any of these wants comes first, there is something behind all—
The hope for Californian gold.
The wagon train feels out across the prairie. It traces a path that other wagon trains make more distinct— and then so rolls a movement that to this day can be seen the ruts of its wheels.
But behind the visions of gold, and the imagined feel of nuggets, there is something else—
The gold plays out. A dominant motive turns to something else. Now a social growth feels out. Its material of people, who otherwise would have been stationary, has been moved to the west.
The first, faint structures in an embryonic organism are of cartilage. They are replaced by bone.
The paths across prairies turn to lines of steel.
Or that once upon a time, purposefully, to stimulate future developments, gold was strewn in California— and that there had been control upon the depositions, so that only enough to stimulate a development, and not enough to destroy a financial system had been strewn—
That in other parts of this earth, in far back times, there had been purposeful plantings of the little, yellow slugs that would— when their time should come— bring about other extensions of social growths.
But the word purposeful, and the word providential, are usurped words. They are of the language of theologians, and are meant to express an idea of a presiding being, ruling existence, superior to it, and not of it, or not implicit to it. I'd rather go on using these words, denying their ownership by any special cult, than to coin new words. With no necessity for thinking of an external designer and controller, I can think of design and control and providence and purpose and preparation for future uses, if I can think not loosely of Nature, but of a Nature, as an organic whole. Every being, except for its dependence upon environment, is God to its parts.
It is upon the northern parts of this earth that the civilizations that have persisted have grown up, then extending themselves colonially southward. History, like South America and Africa, tapers southward. There are no ruins of temples, pyramids, obelisks, in Australia, Argentina, South Africa. Preponderantly peninsulas are southward droops. As if by design, or as if concordantly with an accentuation of lands and peoples in the north, the sun shines about a week longer in the north, each year, than in the south. The coldness in the less important Antarctic regions is more intense than in the Arctic, and here there is no vegetation like the grasses and flowers of the Arctic, in the summertime. Life withers southward. Musk oxen, bears, wolves, foxes, lemmings in the Far North— but there are only amphibious mammals in the Antarctic. Fields of Arctic poppies in the Arctic summertime— but summer in the Antarctic is gray with straggling lichens. If this earth be top-shaped as some of the geodesists think, it is a bloom that is stemmed with desolation.
There are no deposits of coal in the southern parts that compare with deposits in the northern parts. The greatest abundance of oil supplies is north of the equator. It looks like organic preparation, in formative times, before human life appeared upon this earth, for civilizations that would grow up in the north. For ages, peoples of this earth were ignorant of the uses of coal and oil, upon which their later developments would depend.
But so conventionalized are the thoughts of most persons, upon this subject, that if, for instance, my expression is that gold was strewn in California in preparation for future uses, there must be either a visualization of an aggrandized man, who walked about, slinging nuggets, or a denial that, except in the mind of a man, there can be purpose, or control, or design, or providence—
But the making of a lung in an embryonic being that cannot breathe— but it will breathe. This making of a lung is a preparation for future uses. Or the depositions of tissues that are muscles that are not, but that will be, used. Mechanical foresight, or preparation for future uses, pervades every embryonic being. There is a fortune teller in every womb.
Still, not altogether only theological have been speculations upon the existence of purpose, or design, control, or guidance in "Nature." There are philosophical doctrines known as orthogenesis and entelechy. Again we are in a situation that we have noted. If there be orthogenesis, or guidance from within— within what? Heretofore, this doctrine has provided no outlines within which to think. All that is required for thinkableness, instead of bafflement, is to give up attempted notions upon Nature, as Universality, and conceive of one thinkable-sized existence, of shape that is representable in thought, and conceive of an organic orthogenesis within that.
In the organic sense, there is, in the Arctic regions, no great need for water. Though the coldness is not so intense here as it is commonly supposed to be, the climate nevertheless prevents much colonization. I have never read of a deluge in the Arctic. Thunderstorms are very uncommon. Some explorers have never seen a thunderstorm in the Arctic regions. And at the same time there are oppressively warm, or almost tropical, summer days in the Arctic. Instead of the enormous falls of snow, of common suppositions, the fall of snow, in the Far North, is "very light" (Stefansson). It looks like organically economic neglect of a part that cannot be used. Where, as reliefs, thunderstorms are not needed, there are, except as vagaries, no thunderstorms, though the summertime conditions in places of need and no need are much alike. See Heilprin's account of his experiences in Greenland— summer days so nearly tropical that pitch melted from the seams of his ship.
The alternations that are known as the seasons are beneficial. They have come about accidentally, or they have been worked out by Automatic Design, or by all-pervasive intelligence, or by equilibration, if that word be preferred to the word "intelligence." It looks as if more complexly a problem was solved. It is commonly thought that only brains solve problems, or, rather, approximate to solutions: but every living thing that carries a weapon, or a tool, has, presumably not with its brains, but with the intelligence that pervades all substances— so then with the intelligence of its body— solved a problem. It looks as if more complexly a problem was solved, as I say, though in anything like a real, or final, sense, no problem ever has been solved. By the varying incidence of the sun, alternations of fruitfulness and rest could be brought about in the north and the south, but that left rhythms small in the tropics. It looks as if here, intelligently, were brought about the changes that are known as the dry season and the rainy season. I have never read a satisfactory explanation of this alternation, in conventional, meteorological terms.
In the April rains there is evidence, or might be, if we could have a rational idea as to what we mean by evidence, of design, and an automatically intelligent provision and control. Something is controlling the motions of the planets, according to all appearances that we take as appearances of control. Accepting this, I am only amplifying. Rains, of a gentle and frequent kind that is most beneficial to young plants, or best adapted to them, fall in April. Conventional biology is too one-sided. It treats of adaptation of plants to rain. We see also the adaptation of rains to plants. But there must be either the conventionally theological, or the organic, view, to see this reciprocity. If one prefers to think of a kind and loving deity, who is sending the April rains, he will have to consider— or, rather, will be faced by— records of other rains, which are of the loving kindness of slaughter and desolation and woe.
There is some, unknown condition that ameliorates the climate of Great Britain, as if this center of colony-sporing were prepared for by an automatic purposefulness, and protected from the rigors of the same latitudes in the west. Once upon a time, one of the wisemen's most definite concepts was the Gulf Stream. They wrote about its "absolute demarcation" from surrounding waters. They were as sure of the Gulf Stream as they are today that the stars are trillions of miles away. Lately so much has been written upon the inconceivability of the Gulf Stream having effect upon climate farther from its source than somewhere around Cape Hatteras, that I shall not go into that subject. Something is especially warming Great Britain, and it cannot be thought to be the Gulf Stream. It may be an organically providential amelioration. It may play out, when the functioning period of Great Britain passes away. I am not much given to prophecy, but I'll take this chance— that if England loses India, we may expect hard winters in England.
Our acceptance is that nations work together, or operate against one another functionally, or as guided by the murderous supervisions of a whole Organism. Or, apologizing again, I call such organized slaughter, super-metabolism. So enormous is the subject of human history, as affected by its partness in a whole, that I shall reserve it for treatment some other time. Monistically— though some other time I shall pluralistically take another view, as well— the acceptance is that human beings have not existed as individuals any more than have cells in an animal organism existences of their own. Still, one must consider that there is something of individuality, or contrariness in every cell. This view of submergence is now so widespread that it is expressed by writers in many fields of thought. But they lack the concept of a whole, trying to think of a social organism as a whole, though clearly every social quasi-organism has relations with other social quasi-organisms, and is dependent enormously, or vitally, upon environment. Other thinkers, or more than doubtful thinkers, say that they think of the unthinkable Absolute as the whole.
I have a notion that, for ages, as a factor in an automatic plan, the Australian part of our existence's nucleus, this earth, was reserved. If this be not easy to think, it is equally hard to think why Australia, in its fertile parts, was not colonized by Asiatics. There was relative isolation. But it was not geographical isolation: the distance between Cape York, Australia, and New Guinea is only 100 miles. There was an approximation to isolation so extreme that one type of animal life grew up and prevailed. This gap was jumped by the marsupials of Australia. Then the question is— why, if not obediently to an inhibition, was it not jumped the other way? Of course we can have no absolute expressions, but just when the dingoes and the wild cattle of Queensland first arrived in Australia is still considered debatable.
There were civilizations in the Americas, but they were civilizations that could not resist the relatively late-appearing Europeans. Long before, there had been other civilizations in Central America, but they had disappeared, or they had been removed. The extinction of them is, by archaeologists, considered as mysterious, as is the extinction of the dinosaurs, by the paleontologists— or as, by cells of a later period, might be considered the designed and scheduled, or purposeful, extinction of cartilage cells in an embryo.
