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The Nature of Our Quest
by Arthur Keith
3 November 2003
I have now reached the end of the first part of my
argument. I am forthwith to assume that these
prejudices which I mentioned to you have been grafted
in our natures for a special purpose - an evolutionary
purpose. Looking out on the world of humanity as at
present constituted it is hard to see what useful
purpose is served by these prejudices of ours; they
are the source of infinite discord and unrest. To
understand the part they have played in raising
mankind to its high estate we must look out on the
world, not as it now is, but as it was before our
modern civilization wrecked Nature's original scheme.
We have to make a journey into the prehistoric past if
we are to explain the "devices of the human heart."
Before we can make this journey I must prepare the way
by clearing certain obstacles from our path. These
obstacles are prejudices which cling closely to us and
can be removed only by the strongest efforts of
reason. The first of these prejudices relates to time
- to the antiquity of man. Adam Smith had a restricted
conception of time; in his eyes man's antiquity was a
matter of some six thousand years; the modern
Darwinist carries man's antiquity into a remote past.
While he regarded the creational act as the work of a
day, the modern Darwinist looks upon it as the labour
of eons of years. Adam Smith thought of Man as an
instantaneous creation - the perfected work of the
Great Sculptor of the Universe. The modern Darwinist
looks upon the creational forces which brought man
into being as working gradually, their action being
spread over many hundreds of thousands of years. Man,
the Darwinist believes, was slowly and laboriously
moulded by forces not mysteriously situated outside
his body, but working in his very flesh, bone, and
brain, fashioning him into what he has become. These
forces are still in him, capable of carrying him
onwards and upwards. Were Adam Smith alive now, I am
certain he would not find it difficult to replace his
restricted conception of time with the larger outlook
of the modern Darwinist. The older and the newer ways
of explaining man's origin are not so different as
they appear. Adam Smith called in Nature; the modern
Darwinist calls in Evolution. Both he and I, however,
are agreed on these points: (1) the heart of man has
been marvellously contrived; (2) its contrivances work
for the ultimate welfare of Mankind. Call the
creational forces which mould living forces what you
will, the cunning and contrivance which they have
succeeded in bringing into being are only too familiar
to us students of life. Everywhere we find
contrivances; we spend our lives in seeking to unravel
them and in explaining how they came about in the
natural course of evolutionary events.
While pursuing the first part of my argument I have
been somewhat unmannerly; I have kept you standing on
the threshold - the threshold of the door which leads
into the world of man's prehistoric past. As I push
open this door and beg you to enter, I would again
remind you of the object of our quest. We are in
search of the beginnings and significance of these
prejudices I have already mentioned to you - a
partiality for what is our own; the preference for our
own people, for our own locality, for our own mode of
speech, for our own nation, and for our own traditions
and history. What beneficial or evolutionary purpose
could such prejudices have served even in a
prehistoric world? Far from tending to bring diverse
peoples together, they serve in the present world to
keep them apart and to separate the people of one
locality from those of neighbouring districts. When we
look closely at the manner in which the prehistoric
world was arranged, we begin to understand that these
prejudices are a part of Nature's scheme for man's
advancement. The world we have entered is altogether
different from that of today. There are no cities in
it, no towns, not even villages; there is not a patch
of garden nor a plot of corn. The earth retains its
virgin state. Its human inhabitants are few in
numbers, being everywhere broken up into local hunting
communities, tribes or clans. There are no high roads
in this pehistoric world; no industries, no commerce.
The prehistoric world I am picturing to you had an
inconceivably long duration, standing to our historic
period as a year does to a day. In this prehistoric
world the modern races of mankind were evolved; from
it they emerged into our historic world. Above all, I
want you to observe a profound difference between our
world and the one I am depicting to you: a difference
which has the most direct bearing on my argument. Our
world is organized for material progress - for the
increase of wealth and the increase of knowledge. The
prehistoric world, the real Garden of Eden, was
organized for a totally different purpose. Nature had
arranged it to serve her own particular purpose - the
production of new and better breeds of men.
When you enter the prehistoric world with the object
of discovering the origin of the prejudices which
still cling to us so closely, you must fix your
attention on one particular aspect of its population -
its organization into separate local communities which
I shall speak of as tribes or clans. The tribal
organization is part of Nature's scheme. A modern
breeder, if he entered this prehistoric world, would
at once perceive the object which Nature had in view.
If he were called on to evolve a new human breed he
would do just what Nature has done, separate Mankind
into herds and tribes and keep them isolated and pure
for an endless period. Each tribe in our prehistoric
world represented an evolutionary experiment. Without
isolation Nature could have done nothing. How did she
keep tribes apart? The answer to this question yields
a clue to the object of our search - the origin of our
prejudices. We are apt to think of seas, rivers,
mountain-chains, deserts, and inpenetrable jungles as
the barriers which kept evolving tribes and races
apart. No doubt they have assisted to secure this
object, but Nature did not trust to them. She
established her real and most effective barriers in
the human heart. These instinctive likes and dislikes
of ours, which I speak of as prejudices, have come
down to us from the prehistoric world. They are
essential parts of the evolutionary machinery which
Nature employed throughout eons of time to secure the
separation of man into permanent groups and thus to
attain production of new and improved races of
Mankind.
Before I shut the door of this prehistoric world and
proceed to discuss problems relating to the one in
which we now live, there are certain other aspects of
its organization we must consider if we are to
understand our prejudices aright. As you look through
the doorway into this prehistoric world you become
astounded at the ingenuity - almost diabolical - which
Nature had introduced into its organization. She had
arranged it on a competitive basis; each tribe was a
team engaged in the eternal struggle to obtain
promotion and avoid relegation. Our modern masters of
football have but copied the scheme of competition
which Nature had set up in her ancient world. Her
League of Humanity had its divisions - racial
divisions - white, yellow, brown, and black. Tribes
constituted her competing teams. No transfers for her;
each member of the team had to be home-born and
home-bred. She did not trust her players or their
managers farther than she could see them! To make
certain they would play the great game of life as she
intended it should be played she put them into colours
- not transferable jerseys, but liveries of living
flesh, such liveries as the races of the modern world
now wear. She made certain that no player could leave
his team without being recognized as a deserter. To
make doubly certain she did an almost unbelievable
thing. She invaded the human heart and organized it so
that her tribal teams would play her game - not
theirs. She tuned the heart of her teams for her own
ends. She not only imbued her opposing teams with an
innate love of competition and of "teamwork"; she did
much more. What modern football team could face the
goalposts unless it developed as it took the field a
spirit of antagonism towards the players wearing
opposing colours? Nature endowed her tribal teams with
this spirit of antagonism for her own purposes. It has
come down to us and creeps out from our modern life in
many shapes, as national rivalries and jealousies and
as racial hatreds. The modern name for this spirit of
antagonism is race-prejudice.
THE DUALITY OF HUMAN NATURE
We have visited the prehistoric tribal world of
humanity with the object of finding an explanation of
various forms of prejudice - personal prejudice, local
prejudice, national prejudice, and racial prejudice. I
have been seeking to prove to you that Nature had
planted these qualities deeply in the tribal heart of
the prehistoric world for a purpose - the production
of higher and better races of Mankind. We Scotsmen
ought to understand the working of the tribal heart;
not so many centuries ago our ancestors still retained
the organization of the prehistoric world. The tribal
heart still beats strongly within us. We ought to know
something of that inborn passion for our native soil
which is called patriotism. Onlookers who note the
numbers in which we Scots seek a home in other lands
may doubt if this feeling or prejudice is really
deeply rooted in us. We know better; never a Scotsman,
as he sailed away and saw his native shores sink out
of sight, but was buoyed up by the hope of a speedy
and fortunate return. Why should this special love for
our native land be so developed in us? Patriotism, if
a precious, is also a costly prejudice. Modern
civilization wars against it - seeking for its
destruction. It serves no useful or economic purpose
in the world of today. But if we hark back to the
prehistoric tribal world - Nature's Kingdom - we find
it to be an essential part of an evolutionary scheme.
Suppose, for a moment, that there was no bond which
tied a tribal community to its own locality. The
members of such a tribe or clan would at once scatter;
Nature's evolutionary team would be broken up.
Patriotism is part of Nature's machinery for keeping
her evolutionary teams intact. Tribes and territory go
together; to keep a tribe intact a tribal territory
must also be kept intact. A tribe regarded its
territory as sacred. So strongly was this feeling
developed in our ancestral clansman that they died
rather than that an invader should put a foot on it.
The national patriotism of Scotland I regard as an
inheritance from our tribal ancestry.
There is still another quality - a very primitive one
- derived from our tribal ancestors which I now desire
to press on your attention. It is an affair of the
human heart, first-cousin to the prejudices and
predilections we have been discussing. It is the love
of independence which now is and has ever been so
strongly developed in Scotland. We Scotsmen, when
called upon, have no hesitation in undertaking the
management of other peoples and other countries, but
we deeply resent interference by outsiders in the
conduct of our own affairs. Why should we resent a
foreign civil service - especially if it could manage
our affairs better than we do it ourselves? Mr.
Bernard Shaw has said that the nation which wishes its
affairs to be well managed should recruit its
government from an alien people. He has suggested that
England might do better if she went to China for her
Ministers of State. We have given India peace and
prosperity such as she could never have attained for
herself, yet this spirit of independence, so long
asleep, begins again to stir in her blood and provoke
a fever of unrest. No appeal to the modern world or to
the business mind will help you to understand this
strange bubble of the human blood - this inbred love
of independence. But when you appeal to the
prehistoric tribal world you immediately obtain
enlightenment. Think. for a moment, what the fate of a
tribe in our prehistoric world would have been if this
passion had not been developed in its tribal heart.
Such a tribe would have been too "proud to fight,"
even for independence. When it gave up the management
of its own affairs it lost its place amongst Nature's
evolutionary teams; it fell out of her league and was
promptly relegated to the limbo of the unfit. Nature
made sure of her tribal teams by making this love of
independence a dominant passion. It is just because we
Scotsmen are so recently evolved from a tribal state
that this unconquerable desire is so strong within us.
Some little way back I had to claim your patience for
keeping you standing so long on the threshold of the
prehistoric world. We have been rambling through that
world, picking up certain things. What has been the
object of our search? If I am to retain your attention
it is now necessary that I unfold to you the end I
have in view. It is to obtain light on the ferment of
unrest which disturbs the peace and harmony of nations
and peoples in our modern world. These disturbances
spring not from man's head, but from his heart. If we
are to discover the cause of these national and racial
disturbances we have to go back to the real Garden of
Eden and note the circumstances amidst which the heart
of man was moulded. It is useless to appeal to the
annals of classical Rome and Ancient Greece for light
on these modern problems. The heart of man was moulded
long before their city-states, empires, and republics
came into existence. Nor does an appeal to the oldest
records of Egypt or of Mesopotamia assist us. We have
to go back to the prehistoric tribal world out of
which the pioneers of these ancient civilisations and
of ours emerged some ten thousand years ago. What I
have been seeking to prove to you is this: the heart
of modern civilized man is still alive with the
instinctive longings, desires, and prejudices of
tribal man. If the politician is to know his business
he must first understand the heart of tribal man. And
when he sees the problems of human nature as we
students of evolution see them, what is he to do? What
measures is he to take? Is he to legislate so as to
eliminate our inherited prejudices, or is he to give
these prejudices a place in modern civilization? It is
an answer to these queries I now propose to lay before
you.
If we are to obtain light on certain obscure but
pressing problems of the modern world there is still
one other aspect of our tribal ancestors I must lay
before you. Every tribesman had a dual personality; he
was one person to his tribe; to the rest of the world
quite another. All were Barrie-Macconochies or
Jekyll-Hydes. To his fellow-tribesman our tribesman
was kind, unselfish, loyal, and affectionate; the
moment he thought of or dealt with those outside his
tribe he bacame hard-hearted, treacherous, and cruel.
He was idealistic, but his ideals were for the
aggrandisement of his own people and the undoing of
all rival tribes. Faith, hope, and charity resided in
his heart, but the field of their activity was
confined within the narrow limits of the tribal
frontier. Within these limits he religiously observed
the ten commandments; outside them he habitually broke
each one of them. If his fellow-tribesman killed one
of an alien tribe, that, in his eyes, was an act of
herorism, but if his friend were slain by an enemy,
then he viewed the act as one of foul murder. The
tribal heart had two standards of justice - one which
held within the tribe, the other which was applied to
those who were outside it. The tribesman listened to
slanders cast upon rival tribes with equanimity, but
the slightest aspersion on his own touched him to the
quick. He had a peace heart and a war heart; in the
twinkling of an eye the one replaced the other.
What is the explanation of this dual action of the
tribal heart? We who are the descendants of a clannish
stock should be in a better position to answer than
those whose natures have filtered through generations
of city life. For my part I have no doubt as to the
right explanation; to find it you have to go back to
our prehistoric tribal world - Nature's world. As I
have assured you there is no device, be it ever so
cunning, that Nature will not find out and apply -
especially when it concerns her greatest work - the
creation of man. Nature planted love and hate side by
side in the tribal heart - but for what purpose?
Suppose, for a moment, she had given the tribal heart
only a capacity to love, what would have happened?
Why, Mankind throughout the world would have regarded
each other as brothers, clung together and mingled
together. There could have been no separation of
Mankind into tribes - which are Nature's evolutionary
cradles. Without a tribal organization there could
have been no evolutionary progress - no ascent of man.
Let us look at the problem from another point of view.
Suppose the hearts of our tribal ancestors had been
endowed only with a power to hate. What would have
happened? Men could not live together who are capable
only of hatred; tribes could not have been formed;
and if you are to have evolutionary progress you must
mobilize Mankind into groups. This dual organization
of the tribal heart - virtuous at one moment, vicious
at the next, is part of Nature's scheme of evolution.
A tribesman's heart, with its loves and hates, its
likes and dislikes, its heritage of prejudices, still
beats in every human breast. The problem which the
world is now seeking to solve is this: How is our
tribal heritage of prejudice to be reconciled with the
needs of our modern civilization?
ARTHUR KEITH
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