The nature of man : studies in optimistic philosophy / by Eĺie Metchnikoff ; The English translation edited by P. Chalmers Mitchell.

  • Metchnikoff, Elie, 1845-1916.
Date:
[1903], ©1903
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The nature of man : studies in optimistic philosophy / by Eĺie Metchnikoff ; The English translation edited by P. Chalmers Mitchell. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    but there are grades among the elect; and a creature may have adapted itself in a proportion sufficient for bare life, but not for happiness. The moth, invincibly drawn to the flame which burns its wings, the ladybird which loves the secret inner juice of flowers, and every summer tries to suck the aromatic sugar of the dandelion, yet never once through all the ages has caught one drop of it—such poor wee beasties live, indeed if it be living, never to attain an unforgotten dear ideal; but ask them their opinion of the Harmony of Nature! . . . And man, poor “ fluke ” or sport of the anthropoid ape—in which category are we to place him ? His adaptation, at any rate, is far from complete. He is perhaps happier than the cochineal, but a little less so than the orchid or the delving wasp. . . . He has learned how to diminish suffering; but he has not yet found out how to avert the spectre of decay. Old Age, Pain, and Death— these are discords in the Concert of Nature that no philosophy can charm away! The lowest organisms are immortal. Certain infusoria join and divide, divide and join, in a perpetual chain of life, uniting in the hour of weak¬ ness, and, when rejuvenated by the act of coupling, breaking apart again into several separate organisms; they never die. But man, like the higher animals, pays for his superiority in being subject to death. Perhaps—who knows ?—some dim remembrance of that lowest life of all, which is eternal, haunts him still; for he can never resign himself to his mortality. He has indeed, as a supreme consolation, the vision of an existence beyond' the grave ; and yet, so strong is the instinct of life, that the most religious persons are often subject to the fear of death. And here steps in M. Metchnikoff with his new theory. He says in effect : Listen to me a moment. Mats ce n'est rien. Death or old age ! Old age is the consequence of a hypertrophy of the phagocytes or white corpuscles, which, having vanquished and devoured their natural enemies the microbes, are obliged to batten at last, for lack of food, upon the nobler organs of the human frame. In a few years, at the Pasteur Institute or elsewhere, we shall find out a serum which will supply these phagocytes with their necessary nourishment, and so prolong the vitality of heart and brain and lungs in the human individual, En attendant, my friends, return to nature, lead a simpler life, diminish the number of your desires, and believe that old age may cease to be a terror— “ Grow old along with me, The best is yet to be.” From 20 to 50 a man should live for himself and his family; from 50 to 100 for science and humanity, and after a hundred for the State. Honoured, useful, in full possession of all his faculties at six score years and ten, the greybeard of the approaching future will be among the most enviable of mankind. For the fear of death is an aberration. The fact is that only one man in a million at present dies a natural death. We should live till 140 years of age. A man who expires at 70 or 80 is the victim of accident cut off in the flower of his days, and he unconsciously resents being deprived of the 50 years or so which Nature owes him. Leave him a little longer, and in due time he will desire to die, as a child at dusk desires to sleep. M. Metchnikoff holds, and has every right to hold, that mind and what we call Soul cannot exist without the nerve-cells which appear to produce them. And, in fact, every day we see how some disease or even temporary derange¬ ment alters the very nature of the person affected. We cannot conceive of mind without brain or nerve, any more than we can imagine a river without a bed. And yet (an idealist philosopher might inquire), if the banks of that river should break, if every drop of liquid should lose itself in the neighbour¬ ing soil, does that water cease to exist ? Not so ! From the beginning of the world the same sum of water has supplied our planet, circulating incessantly in all its fibres, rushing in large currents, welling in springs, caught up in mists and clouds, falling again in rain and dew. Not an atom is lost, and every atom eternal. We own to a fancy that these things may serve as an image of the spiritual universe.