Read Ebook: The miracle of Saint Anthony by Maeterlinck Maurice Maurice Arthur Bartlett Author Of Introduction Etc Teixeira De Mattos Alexander Translator

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INDEX 313

EVOLUTION. THE LIVING ORGANISM AND ITS NATURAL HISTORY

The Doctrine of Evolution is a body of principles and facts concerning the present condition and past history of the living and lifeless things that make up the universe. It teaches that natural processes have gone on in the earlier ages of the world as they do to-day, and that natural forces have ordered the production of all things about which we know.

It is difficult to find the right words with which to begin the discussion of so vast a subject. As a general statement the doctrine is perhaps the simplest formula of natural science, although the facts and processes which it summarizes are the most complex that the human intellect can contemplate. Nothing in natural history seems to be surer than evolution, and yet the final solution of evolutionary problems defies the most subtle skill of the trained analyst of nature's order. No single human mind can contain all the facts of a single small department of natural science, nor can one mind comprehend fully the relations of all the various departments of knowledge, but nevertheless evolution seems to describe the history of all facts and their relations throughout the entire field of knowledge. Were it possible for a man to live a hundred years, he could only begin the exploration of the vast domains of science, and were his life prolonged indefinitely, his task would remain forever unaccomplished, for progress in any direction would bring him inevitably to newer and still unexplored regions of thought.

Therefore it would seem that we are attempting an impossible task when we undertake in the brief time before us the study of this universal principle and its fundamental concepts and applications. But are the difficulties insuperable? Truly our efforts would be foredoomed to failure were it not that the materials of knowledge are grouped in classes and departments which may be illustrated by a few representative data. And it is also true that every one has thought more or less widely and deeply about human nature, about the living world to which we belong, and about the circumstances that control our own lives and those of our fellow creatures. Many times we withdraw from the world of strenuous endeavor to think about the "meaning of things," and upon the "why" and "wherefore" of existence itself. Every one possesses already a fund of information that can be directly utilized during the coming discussions; for if evolution is true as a universal principle, then it is as natural and everyday a matter as nature and existence themselves, and its materials must include the facts of daily life and observation.

Although the doctrine of evolution was stated in very nearly its present form more than a century ago, much misunderstanding still exists as to its exact meaning and nature and value; and it is one of the primary objects of these discussions to do away with certain current errors of judgment about it. It is often supposed to be a remote and recondite subject, intelligible only to the technical expert in knowledge, and apart from the everyday world of life. It is more often conceived as a metaphysical and philosophical system, something antagonistic to the deep-rooted religious instincts and the theological beliefs of mankind. Truly all the facts of knowledge are the materials of science, but science is not metaphysics or philosophy or belief, even though the student who employs scientific method is inevitably brought to consider problems belonging to these diverse fields of thought. A study of nervous mechanism and organic structure leads to the philosophical problem of the freedom of the will; questions as to the evolution of mind and the way mind and matter are related force the investigator to consider the problem of immortality. But these and similar subjects in the field of extra-science are beyond its sphere for the very good reason that scientific method, which we are to define shortly, cannot be employed for their solution. Evolution is a science; it is a description of nature's order, and its materials are facts only. In method and content it is the very science of sciences, describing all and holding true throughout each one.

The overwhelming importance of knowing about natural laws and universal principles is not often realized. What have we to do with evolution and science? Are we not too busy with the ordering of our immediate affairs to concern ourselves with such remote matters? So it may appear to many, who think that the study of life and its origin, and of the vital facts about plants and animals may be interesting and may possess a certain intellectual value, but nothing more. The investigation of man and of men and of human life is regarded by the majority as a mere cultural exercise which has no further result than the recording of present facts and past histories; but it is far otherwise. Science and evolution must deal with mere details about the world at large, and with human ideals and with life and conduct; and while their purpose is to describe how nature works now and how it has progressed in the past, their fullest value is realized in the sure guidance they provide for our lives. This cannot be clear until we reach the later portions of our subject, but even at the outset we must recognize that knowledge of the great rules of nature's game, in which we must play our parts, is the most valuable intellectual possession we can obtain. If man and his place in nature, his mind and social obligations, become intelligible, if right and wrong, good and evil, and duty come to have more definite and assignable values through an understanding of the results of science, then life may be fuller and richer, better and more effective, in direct proportion to this understanding of the harmony of the universe.

And so we must approach the study of the several divisions of our subject in this frame of mind. We must meet many difficulties, of which the chief one is perhaps our own human nature. For we as men are involved, and it is hard indeed to take an impersonal point of view,--to put aside all thoughts of the consequences to us of evolution, if it is true. Yet emotion and purely human interest are disturbing elements in intellectual development which hamper the efforts of reason to form assured conceptions. We must disregard for the time those insistent questions as to higher human nature, even though we must inevitably consider them at the last. Indeed, all the human problems must be put aside until we have prepared the way for their study by learning what evolution means, what a living organism is, and how sure is the evidence of organic transformation. When we know what nature is like and what natural processes are, then we may take up the questions of supreme and deep concern about our own human lives.

Human curiosity has ever demanded answers to questions about the world and its make-up. The primitive savage was concerned primarily with the everyday work of seeking food and building huts and carrying on warfare, and yet even he found time to classify the objects of his world and to construct some theory about the powers that made them. His attainments may seem crude and childish to-day, but they were the beginnings of classified knowledge, which advanced or stood still as men found more or less time for observation and thought. Freed from the strife of primeval and medieval life, more and more observers and thinkers have enlarged the boundaries and developed the territory of the known. The history of human thought itself demonstrates an evolution which began with the savages' vague interpretation of the "what" and the "why" of the universe, and culminates in the science of to-day.

Such a principle as the law of gravitation, like evolution, is true if the basic facts are true, if they are reasonably related, and if the conclusion is drawn reasonably from them. It is true for all persons who possess normal minds, and this is why Huxley speaks of science as "common sense,"--that is, something which is a reasonable and sensible part of the mental make-up of thinking persons that they can hold in common. The form and method of science are fully set forth by these definitions, and the purpose also is clearly revealed. For the results of investigation are not merely formulae which summarize experience as so much "conceptual shorthand," as Karl Pearson puts it, but they must serve also to describe what will probably be the orderly workings of nature as future experience unfolds. Human endeavor based upon a knowledge of scientific principles must be far more reliable than where it is guided by mere intuition or unreasoned belief, which may or may not harmonize with the everyday world laws. Just as the law of gravitation based upon past experience provides the bridge builder and the architect with a statement of conditions to be met, so we shall find that the principles of evolution demonstrate the best means of meeting the circumstances of life.

Evolution has developed, like all sciences, as the method we have described has been employed. Alchemy became chemistry when the so-called facts of the medievalist were scrutinized and the false were discarded. Astrology was reorganized into astronomy when real facts about the planets and stars were separated from the belief that human lives were influenced by the heavenly bodies. Likewise the science of life has undergone far-reaching changes in coming down to its present form. All the principles of these sciences are complete only in so far as they sum up in the best way the whole range of facts that they describe. They cannot be final until all that can be known is known,--until the end of all knowledge and of time. It is because he feels so sure of what has been gained that the man of science seems to the unscientific to claim finality for his results. He himself is the first to point out that dogmatism is unjustified when its assertions are not so thoroughly grounded in reasonable fact as to render their contrary unthinkable. He seeks only for truth, realizing that new discoveries must oblige him to amend his statement of the laws of nature with every decade. But the great bulk of knowledge concerning life and living forms is so sure that science asserts, with a decision often mistaken for dogmatism, that evolution is a real natural process.

Wherever we look we see evidence of nature's change; every rain that falls washes the earth from the hills and mountains into the valleys and into the streams to be transported somewhere else; every wind that blows produces its small or greater effect upon the face of the earth; the beating of the ocean's waves upon the shore, the sweep of the great tides,--these, too, have their transforming power. The geologists tell us that such natural forces have remodeled and recast the various areas of the earth and that they account for the present structure of its surface. These men of science and the astronomers and the physicists tell us that in some early age the world was not a solid globe, with continents and oceans on its surface, as now; that it was so very hot as to be semi-fluid or semi-solid in consistency. They tell us that before this time it was still more fluid, and even a mass of fiery vapors. The earth's molten bulk was part of a mass which was still more vast, and which included portions which have since condensed to form the other bodies of the solar system,--Mars and Jupiter and Venus and the rest,--while the sun remains as the still fiery central core of the former nebulous materials, which have undergone a natural history of change to become the solar system. The whole sweep of events included in this long history is called cosmic evolution; it is the greater and more inclusive process comprising all the transformations which can be observed now and which have occurred in the past.

The several kinds are no more interchangeable than are the different forms of locomotives that we have mentioned. The flat-bottom boat of the Mississippi would not venture to cross the Atlantic Ocean in winter, nor would the "Lusitania" attempt to plow a way up the shallow mud-banked Mississippi. These products of mechanical development are not efficient unless they run under the circumstances which have controlled their construction, unless they are fitted or adapted to the conditions under which they must operate.

Two objections to the employment of these analogies will present themselves at once. The definition may be all very well as far as the machines are concerned, but, it may be asked, should a living thing like a horse or a dog be compared with the steamship or the locomotive? Can we look upon the living thing as a mechanism in the proper sense of the word? A second objection will be that human invention and ingenuity have controlled the evolution of the steamship and engine by the perfection of newer and more efficient parts. It is certainly true that organic evolution cannot be controlled in the same way by men, and that science has not yet found out what all the factors are. And yet we are going to learn in a later discussion that nature's method of transforming organisms in the course of evolution is strikingly similar to the human process of trial and error which has brought the diverse modern mechanisms to their present conditions of efficiency. This matter, however, must remain for the time just as it stands. The first objection, namely, that an organism ought not to be viewed as a machine, is one that we must meet immediately, because it is necessary at the very outset to gain a clear idea of the essentially mechanical nature of living things and of their relations to the conditions under which they live. It is only when we have such a clear understanding that we can profitably pursue the further inquiries into the evidence of evolution. Our first real task, therefore, is an inquiry into certain fundamental questions about life and living things, upon which we shall build as we proceed.

All living things possess three general properties which seem to be unique; these are a peculiar chemical constitution, the power of repairing themselves as their tissues wear out, and the ability to grow and multiply. The third property is so familiar that we fail to see how sharply it distinguishes the creatures of the organic world. To realize this we have only to imagine how strange it would seem if locomotives and steamships detached small portions of themselves which could grow into the full forms of the parent mechanisms. Equally distinctive is the marvelous natural power which enables an animal to re-build its tissues as they are continually used up in the processes of living; for no man-made, self-sustaining mechanism has ever been perfected. The property of chemical composition is believed by science to be the basis of the second and the third; but this matter of chemical constitution must take its proper place in the series of structural characters, which we shall discuss further on as we develop the conception of organic mechanism.

Whatever definition we may employ for a machine or an engine, we cannot exclude the living organism from its scope. As a "device for transforming and utilizing energy" the living organism differs not at all from any "dead" machine, however complex or simple. The greatest lesson of physiological science is that the operations of the different parts of the living thing, as well as of the whole organism itself, are mechanical; that is, they are the same under similar circumstances. The living creature secures fresh supplies of matter and energy from the environment outside of itself; these provide the fuel and power for the performance of the various tasks demanded of an efficient living thing, and they are the sources upon which the organism draws when it rebuilds its wasted tissues and replenishes its energies. The vital tasks of all organisms must be considered in due course, but at first it is necessary to justify our analogies by analyzing the structural characteristics of animals and plants, just as we might study locomotives in a mechanical museum before we should see how they work upon the rails.

Among the familiar facts which science reveals in a new light are the peculiarly definite qualities of living things as regards size and form. There is no general agreement in these matters among the things of the inorganic world. Water is water, whether it is a drop or the Pacific Ocean; stone is stone, whether it is a pebble, a granite block, or a solid peak of the Rocky Mountains. It is true that there is a considerable range in size between the microscopic bacterium at one extreme and the elephant or whale at the other, but this is far less extensive than in the case of lifeless things like water and stone. In physical respects, water may be a fluid, or a gas in the form of steam, or a solid, as a crystal of snow or a block of ice. But the essential materials of living things agree throughout the entire range of plant and animal forms in having a jellylike consistency.

But by far the most striking and important characteriinck plays is the landscape of "Ulalume":

The skies they were ashen and sober, The leaves they were crisped and sear, It was night in the lonesome October In my most immemorial year. It was hard by the dim lake of Auber In the misty mid-region of Weir, It was down by the dark tarn of Auber In the ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir.

But it was a more material setting that Maeterlinck gave to "The Miracle of St. Anthony." Not the intangible Nowhere or the impalpable At any Time, but the present day, a commonplace house, and a small provincial town in the Low Countries. Instead of stately marble pillars, or primeval forest, or limitless sea, a room with leather-covered benches against the walls, two wooden stoves and an umbrella stand, on which are hats, a cape and wraps. Instead of swans and sleeping beauties, the old drudge Virginie, with her skirts turned up and her legs bare, swabbing the floor. In the next room is lying the body of the Maiden Lady Hortensia, who in her lifetime had been exceedingly generous in her donations to the church, and especially devoted to the memory of the blessed St. Anthony of Padua. It is the Saint himself, come to restore her to life as a reward for her piety, who presents himself at the door-sill as the curtain rises. In appearance he is not as the dead woman might have expected. Bare-headed and bare-footed, his beard and hair are scrubby and tangled, and he is clothed in a soiled, sack-like, and much dirtied cowl. The story of how he was received by the relatives, the doctor, the parson, and the gathered guests may be read by those who turn to the following pages. It was first presented to American play-goers by the Washington Square Players under the direction of Mr. Edward Goodman at the Bandbox Theatre in New York, the evening of May 7th, 1915. It had the quality of novelty, for it was one of the least known of all the plays. There was a story current at the time that it was produced from the manuscript. What Maeterlinck himself thinks of it, what place in his mind it has in his whole scheme of literary production, the writer cannot say. That is a matter as elusive as the man himself is elusive. To illustrate that elusiveness by a personal reminiscence:

It was six years ago, in the days when the world was happy with the blessedness of a peace that seemed likely to endure, and when the occasional cloud on the political horizon was regarded as nothing more than a mirage, that the writer and a friend--the latter one of the firm of M. Maeterlinck's American publishers--made a journey to the south of France for the purpose of paying their respects to the Belgian mystic in his Nice home. In London we had been advised by Mr. Alexander Teixeira de Mattos, whose admirable translations have done so much to make Maeterlinck's name a household name to English-speaking readers. "Here is his latest letter," said Mr. Teixeira. "It is dated from his villa in the Quartier des Beaumettes, which is the rising ground at the western end of the town. You will find him there; that is, if you succeed in finding him at all. For he is a very difficult man to find. That is one of his peculiarities."

It was the night before the departure from Nice. Our time was limited. At its m?le in the swarming harbor of Marseilles, the Sant Anna, which was to carry us on its roundabout, five thousand mile journey, with New York as the ultimate destination, was preparing for its leaving of the next day. We started on the quest. At the hotel they could tell us nothing. The driver of the fiacre engaged was no better informed. Surprised but undaunted we were soon winding slowly between high stone walls, up the beautiful Beaumettes slope. From villa to villa we travelled, to be met everywhere by puzzled, negative headshakes. "M. Maeterlinck? We do not know him. We have never heard of him. We do not think that he is of the Quartier. Perhaps if you enquire at the villa beyond you will learn something." For two hours in the darkness sweet scented by the breath of the semi-tropical plants and flowers, we kept up the search. But it was in vain. Here indeed was a prophet unknown in his own country. What was the reason for the mystery? Was there a vast conspiracy of silence and pretended ignorance on the part of his neighbors? Were solitude and freedom from interruption so necessary to his being that the great man had sworn them to secrecy? Or had he draped himself in some mysterious veil, some figurative coat of invisible green, through which the eyes of those who dwelt in the Quartier des Beaumettes had never been able to see? We never found out. There was about the enigma something weird, something almost uncanny. We had been told to seek him in a mansion by the sea. We could hear the waves of the Mediterranean beating against the rocks below. But was it another ocean--an ocean of the Never, Never Land that had been meant?

Is there a real Maeterlinck house? we asked ourselves. Or is his habitation of such dream stuff as the House of Usher? Is the land of Maeterlinck a material land, or is it somewhere "hard by the dim lake of Auber, in the misty mid-region of Weir: down by the dark tarn of Auber, in the Ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir?"

THE MIRACLE OF SAINT ANTHONY

THE MIRACLE OF SAINT ANTHONY

VIRGINIE

This is the thirty-sixth time that I've been to the door.... Another beggar! Well, what is it?

SAINT ANTHONY

Let me in.

VIRGINIE

No, you're all over mud. Stay there. What do you want?

SAINT ANTHONY

I want to come in.

VIRGINIE

What for?

SAINT ANTHONY

To bring Mademoiselle Hortense back to life.

VIRGINIE

Bring Mademoiselle Hortense back to life? Get out! Who are you?

SAINT ANTHONY

Saint Anthony.

VIRGINIE

Of Padua?

SAINT ANTHONY

The same.

VIRGINIE

Lord bless me, it's true! Saint Anthony, pray for us! Blessed Saint Anthony, look down upon us! Saint Anthony, pray for us!

SAINT ANTHONY

Shut the door.

VIRGINIE

Wipe your feet on the mat. No, that won't do: rub them hard, rub them hard.

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