620 



NATURE 



[Aprzl 26, 1888 



them, to shooting tame pheasants at a battue or partridges in a 

 turnip- field. 



Then, in what is euphemistically called a life of peace, buyer 

 and seller, master and servant, landlord and tenant, debtor and 

 creditor, are all in a state of simmering antagonism ; and the 

 inventions and so-called improvements of applied science and 

 art do not lessen it. Exercise is antagonism ; at each step force 

 is used to lift up our bodies and push back the earth ; as the 

 eminent Joseph Montgolfier said, that when he saw a company 

 dancing, he mentally inverted his view and imagined the earth 

 dancing on the dancers' feet, which it most unquestionably did. 

 Indeed, bis great invention of balloons was guessed at by his 

 witnessing a mild form of antagonism between heat and gravita- 

 tion. He, being a dutiful husband, was airing his wife's dresses, 

 who was going to a ball. He observed the hot air from the fire 

 inflated the light materials, which rose up in a sort of spheroidal 

 form (you may some of you have noticed this form in dress !). 

 This gave him the idea of the fire-balloon, which, being a large 

 paper-maker at Annonay, he forthwith experimented on, and 

 hence we got aerial navigation. This anecdote was told me by 

 his nephew M. Seguin, also an eminent man. Even what we 

 call a natural death is a greater strug-^le than that which other 

 animals go through, and is, in fact, the most artificial of all 

 deaths. The lower animals, practically speaking, do experience 

 a natural death, i.e. a violent or unforeseen death. As soon as 

 their powers decline to such an extent that they cannot take 

 part in the struggle for existence, they die or are killed, generally 

 quickly, and their sufferings are not protracted by the artificial 

 tortures arising from the endeavours to prolong life. 



Let us now pass from individuals to communities. Is there 

 less antagonism now than of yore ? Do the nations of Europe 

 now form a happy family ? Are the armaments of Continental 

 nations, or is the navy of this country, less than in former years ? 

 The very expression " the Great Powers" involves antagonism. 



As with wars and revolutions, so, as I have said, with regard 

 to individuals, during our so-called peace, the fight is continuous 

 among communities. If the water does not boil, it simmers. 

 Not merely are there the struggles of poor against rich going on, 

 but the battles for position and pre-eminence are constant. The 

 subjugated party or sect seeks first for toleration, then for 

 equalization, and then for domination. 



We call contentment a virtue, but we inculcate discontent. A 

 father reproaches his son for not exerting himself to improve his 

 position, and at school and college and in subsequent periods of 

 life efforts at advancement in the social scale are recommended. 

 Individual antagonisms, class antagonisms, political, trading, 

 and religious antagonisms take the place of war. Can war 

 exhibit a more vigorous and persistent antagonism than competi- 

 tion does ? Take the college student with ruined health ; take 

 the bankrupt tradesman with ruined family ; take the aspirants 

 to fashion turning night into day, and preferring, gas or electric 

 light to that of the sun : there is, to be sure, some excuse for this, 

 as we so rarely see the latter. But our very amusements are of a 

 combative character : chess, whist, billiards, racing, cricket, foot- 

 ball, &c. And in all these we, in common parlance, speak of 

 beating our opponent. 



Even dancing is probably a relic and reminiscence of war, 

 and some of its forms are of a military character. I can call to 

 mind only one game which is not combative, and that is the 

 game you are in some sort now playing, viz. " patience," and 

 with, I fear, some degree of internal antagonism ! 



Take, again, the ordinary incidents of a day's life in London. 

 i5,ooD to 20,000 cabs, ojanibuses, vans, private carriages, &c. , 

 all struggling, the horses pushing the earth back and themselves 

 forwards, the pedestrians doing the same, but the horses com- 

 pulsorily — they have not as yet got votes. The occupants of the 

 cabs, vans, &c., are supposed to act from free will, but in the 

 majority of cases they are as much driven as the horses. 

 Insolvents trying to renew bills, rich men trying to save 

 what they have got by saving half an hour of time. Imagine, 

 if you can, the friction of all this, and add the bargaining 

 in shops, the mental efforts in counting-houses, banks, &c., and 

 road repair, now a permanent and continuous institution. 

 Take our railways : similar efforts and resistances. Drivers, 

 signal-men, porters, &c., and the force emanating from the sun 

 millions of years ago, and locked up in the coal-fields, as 

 Stephenson suggested, now employed to overcome the inertia of 

 trains and to make them push the earth in this or that direction, 

 and themselves along its surface. Take the daily struggles in 

 commerce, law, professions, and legislation, and sometimes even 



in science and literature. Politics I cannot enter upon here, 

 but must leave you to judge whether there is not sogtie degree of 

 antagonism in this pursuit. In all this there is plenty of useful 

 antagonism, plenty of useless — much to please Ormuzd and 

 much to delight Ahriman ; but of the two extremes, over-work 

 or stagnation, the latter would, I think, do Ahriman's work 

 more efficiently than the former. We cry peace when there is 

 no peace. Would the world, however, be better if it were 

 otherwise ? Is the Nirvana a pleasing prospect ? Sleep, though 

 not without its troubles and internal antagonism, is our nearest 

 approach to it, but we should hardly wish to be always asleep. 



Shakespeare not only knew something about gravitation, but 

 he also knew something about antagonism. He says, by the 

 mouth of Agamemnon — 



" Sith every action that hath gone before 

 Whereof we have record, trial did draw 

 Bias and thwart, not answering the aim, 

 And that unbodied figure of the thought 

 Thatgav't surmised shape." 



In no case is the friction of life shown more than in the per- 

 formance of "duty," i.e. an act of self-resistance, a word very 

 commonly used ; but the realization of it is by no means so 

 frequent. Indeed, faith in its performance .'o yields to scepticism 

 that it is said that when a man talks of doing his duty, he is 

 meditating some knavish trick. 



The words good and evil are correlative : they are like height 

 and depth, parent and offspring. You cannot, as far as I can 

 see, conceive the existence of the one without involving the con- 

 ception of the other. In their common acceptation they repre- 

 sent the antagonism between what is agreeable or beneficial and 

 what is painful or injurious. 



An old anecdote will give us the notion of good and 

 evil in a slenderly educated mind. A missionary having con- 

 sidered that he had successfully inculcated good principles in 

 the mind of a previously untutored savage, produced him for 

 exhibition before a select audience, and began his catechism by 

 asking him the nature of good and evil. "Evil," the pupil 

 answered, "is when other man takes my wife." "Right," 

 said the missionary, " now give me an example of good." The 

 answer was : " Good is when me takes other man's wife." 

 The answer was not exactly what was expected, but was not far 

 in disaccord with modern views among ourselves and other so- 

 called civilized races. I don't mean as to running away with 

 other men's wives ! But we still view good and evil very much 

 as affecting our own interests. At the commencement of a war 

 each of the opposing parties view victory — i.e. the destruction 

 of their enemies — as good, and being vanquished as evil. 

 Congregations pray for this. Statesmen invoke the God of 

 battles. Those among you who are old enough will call to mind 

 the Crimean War. Each combatant nation gives thanks for the 

 destruction of the enemy, each side possibly believing that they 

 respectively are in the right, but in reality not troubling them- 

 selves much about that minor question. We (unconsciously 

 perhaps) " compound for sins we are inclined to by damning those 

 we have no mind to." So in the daily life of what is called 

 peace. The stage-coach proprietor rejoiced when he had driven 

 his rival off the road, railway directors and shareholders now do 

 the same, so do publicans, shopkeepers, and other rivals. We 

 are still permeated by the old notion of good and evil. But 

 " antagonism," as I view it, not only comprehends the relation of 

 good and evil, but, a^ I have said, produces both, and is as 

 necessary to good as to evil. Without it there would be neither 

 good nor evil. Judging of the lives of our progenitors from 

 what we see of the present races of men of less cerebral develop- 

 ment, we may characterize them as having been more impulsive 

 than ourselves, and as having their joys and sorrows more 

 quickly alternated. After the hunt for food, accompanied by 

 privation and suffering, comes the feast to gorging. Their main 

 evil was starvation, their good repletion. Even now the 

 Esquimaux watches a seal-hole in the bitter cold for hours and 

 days, and his compensation is the spearing and eating the seal. 

 The good is resultant upon and in the long run I suppose 

 equivalent to the evil. These men look not back into the 

 past, and forward into the future as we do. We, by extending 

 our thought over a wider area, are led to more continuing 

 sacrifices, and aim at more lasting enjoyment in the result. 

 The child suffers at school in order that his future life may be 

 more prosperous. The man spends the best part of his life in 

 arduous toil, physical or mental, in order that he may not want in 

 his later years, or that his family may reap the benefit of his 



