The Shadows We Are

The Impotence of Man. By Charles Richet : translated by

" Arm to begin with, there is the force of gravity "—gravity whose unbreakable chains bind us for ever to earth. Never have writers dreamed more wildly than in those fanciful romances wherein men are hurled into space in huge projec- tiles. The thing cannot he done. Only in thought can we know—if " know " it may be called—the mysteries of Space.

Thus starts Richet, and thereafter thoughts of the pathetic feebleness of man follow in a torrent which is, somehow, more exhilarating than depressing.

What, he asks, is that idle tale that here, at least, we are masters ? We are nothing of the sort. We cannot prevent phosphorus from combining with oxygen, diminish or acceler- ate the speed of light, nor even stop our own muscles from contracting under electricity. We cannot break the laws of our world. The whirlwind—but a storm in a tea-cup beside the cosmic forces of outer Space—hurls us hither and thither, helpless, our mightiest works destroyed. Even the mild rain and wind of every day we cannot stem, but must needs build ourselves frail shelters in which to hide. Man is a goldfish in a bowl. - He cannot get out of nor even alter the water in his bath. " The height of his ambition can only be to go on wearily swimming round and round his transparent prison."

With a telling example Richet examines the belief that the individual may be great and powerful among his fellow- creatures. A fine artist spends his soul upon a picture ; and, when it is hung, it is barely distingdishable from the five hundred others in the Salon. Compared, still further, with all the great pictures in all the great capitals of the world, it becomes one in five hundred thousand. There is not much 1 difference between and nothing. And how many of 500,000 those who throng the streets and do the common work 4f the

world see that picture, or seeing, feel it ? Not one in a

1 thousand. The artist's influence, at most is 500,000,000.

If man is thus impotent among his fellows, how much more helpless is he when solitary ! " He could hardly live even a rudimentary animal existence, akin to that of the cave-men in their lairs. The human race owes its semblance of power over matter to the collaboration of human brains."

We are not only impotent, he emphasizes, but ignorant, knowing little even of ourselves ; how we are conceived; born, why we live and why die. The How of life is all but concealed from us, let alone the Why ; and our greatest mystics, our most supreme mathematicians reel back in terror at Time and Space, and at the Infinity of Smallness.

What made, how travails, and where ends the Universe ? How and why seetheS that' vortex of electrons within the atom, which is itself a portion of matter so small that we cannot split it up any smaller even in our thoughts ? We cannot—ah, most humiliating of all !—live within the present. " This very moment in which I Speak is already far. behind me." And an electric current which we cannot feel may yet light a lamp. How many other forces are there of which we are quite unconscious ?—We know not Truth.

He piles it on. Socially we are impotent, for discord rules Society : " Man is emphatically the most anti-social animal in all creation." --Physiologically- we are- impotent, for the human soul cannot by taking thought add a cubit to its body's

stature. We must accept the bodies into which we are born, be they tall or dwarf, fine or feeble. " Not only has the soul no power over the body, but what-is more she, assumes the aptitudes and attitudes that the body elects to give her.

" All the soul's servility is summed up in one brief sentence, which tolls like a death-knell at our every step forward into time, without rest_or remission, the soul ages as the body grows old."

Each fresh page is a dose of bicarbonate of soda for stomachs inflated with human arrogance, and a dram of over-proof spirits fc41 the intellectually inert. Through an inspired translation, the writing glows and pulses with all the life and racy vigour of an original. One simply cannot stop reading about one's own impotence.

The passionate sincerity of the book gives it a religious quality, yet never is it unscientific. Richet's views are not supported by facts : they are based on them. There is some- thing profoundly religious in his conclusion. Having swept away, one by one, all the illusions of man's power, he comes at last to the residuum. We have left moral power. The ego can control itself ; it can check the fierce passion of the Moment with the stored experiences of the past ; it can pit the higher soul against the lower. It can decide. Therein are human dignity and the power of man.

Besides, he asks, what, after all, are power and fame ? Ignorant as we are of the greater mysteries, impotent in the grip of cosmic and earthly forces, we have still, our little Earth to explore—and to enjoy. Yes, the soul can seek and achieve happiness, if only by limiting its desires.

To this treasury of ancient thoughts, forged anew under the hammer of Science in the fire of a fresh mind, perhaps one more may be added—a thought of the greatness of man, True it is that his soul, like his body, is not his own, but the inheritance of aeons of evolution, hammered into the shape of humanity by the stress of life through countless generations. And yet—evolution did not make us what we are ; it chose us from a plenitude of others, and we chose it. Thus far we are the equals of that cosmic force. Are we not greater when, bound by biological laws, hemmed to earth by the force of gravity, we dare to probe into the secrets of our being, and to lift our eyes to the stars and travel in thought across the Space that mocks us ?