A Cityless and Countryless World
An Outline of Practical Co-Operative Individualism
Henry Olerich
[A condensed and edited version of the book
originally published by Gilmore & Olerich, Holstein, Iowa, 1893 /
CHAPTER 9 - Happiness and Truth]]
Happiness, or pleasure, is a feeling which we seek to bring into
consciousness and retain there, while misery, or pain, is a feeling
which we seek to get out of consciousness and to keep out. Hence all
sentient beings of which we have any knowledge are in pursuit of the
greatest happiness. Happiness is the aim and end of all. One plainly
sees, then, that all activity and quietude of sentient organisms,
whether man or beast, have for their ultimate end the acquisition of
the highest attainable state of happiness. Health, wealth and
intelligence are intrinsically worthless. They can only be the means
by which we can attain the end which is always happiness, and the
principle remains the same, whether the duration of this happiness is
but for a moment or for an eternity; whether the receiver intends to
enjoy it in this life only, or in some supposed life to come also.
It is, however, the nature of blindness, disease, ignorance, slavery,
etc., to produce misery, and therefore we call them evils. When we are
not afflicted with them we seek to avoid them; when we are afflicted
with them we seek to cure them. From the foregoing conclusions we are
forced to admit that, as a whole, acts causing pleasure or happiness
are conducive to life, while on the other hand, those causing pain or
misery are destructive to life as a whole. Under no other conceivable
conditions is it possible for a race of sentient creatures to evolve,
maintain and perpetuate itself; for if, as a whole, acts destructive
to life were [less] pleasurable than those which conduce to the
fullness of it, the race of sentient beings, even as it now exists,
would soon become extinct; for pleasure, or happiness, is a feeling
which we seek to bring into consciousness and retain there.
Now for truth.
Truth is the exact correspondence between the subjective order of our
conceptions and the objective order of the relations among things. All
things in the universe, as far as we know and have reason to believe,
are related to one another in one or more ways. The sun attracts all
the planets, and all the planets in turn at tract the sun. All the
fixed stars are attracted by one another, no matter in what remote
region of the universe they may be located. If the matter of only one
of the countless stars of the heavens would be annihilated, all the
remainder would seek a new position.
The sun radiates heat and light. The radiated heat and light strike
the earth. Heat causes evaporation. Absence of heat produces
condensation, and condensation causes rain, etc. Rain, heat and light
are favorable to vegetable growth. The vegetable assimilates the
inorganic into the organic. The animal lives on the vegetable directly
or indirectly. Our environment acts on us, and we in turn react on the
environment. So we find everything, from the mote to the furtherst
star, bound together by endless relations.
When I look at the pen which I hold in my hand, it produces an
impression on my mind. This mental picture produced on the mind by the
attributes of the material pen in my hand, we call an ideal pen. So
you see that all things that we know exist in a double form the idea,
or mental picture, of the thing and the thing itself, or the
attributes of it, which produced the idea, or mental picture. The
material pen in my hand possesses the properties of matter and weighs
some thing; the ideal pen in my mind possesses the properties of mind,
or consciousness, and weighs nothing.
When the mental picture of the ideal pen exactly corresponds with the
material pen in my hand in all its relations, then I have the whole
truth concerning the pen. But, when I know that a pen will write and
that the point is split, but do not know that the point of it, when
brought with violence against the hand or other parts of the body,
will also penetrate, the flesh and cause pain, I have only a partial
knowledge of a pen. That is, my subjective conceptions do not exactly
correspond with the subjective relations among the pen and other
things. In this case I would not know the exact relations between the
pen s point and my own organs. I would therefore be partly ignorant on
this subject, and my ignorance, on this as well as on all other
points, would not unlikely lead me into acts that are attended with
pain or misery acts that are not in tune with facts and relations of
the things in the universe; and for the very reason that such acts are
attended with pain, we call them wrong. There would be no right and no
wrong, if there was no happiness and pain.
All truth must be found by experience. Some is easily found, while
some lies deeply buried from the superficial human view. Some truth is
so conspicuous and universal that all mankind believe and know it.
Some is so obscure and hidden that no man has yet found it, unless we
claim that we know all that can be known, and no well-informed person
will make such claims. It is often said that such and such a thing can
not be done because there are too many different opinions. But the
fact is, that we all agree as far as we have found the truth. Men in
their opinions are likely to differ only concerning those things about
which they have not yet acquired the truth, but they will always agree
as far as they have discovered the truth. Thus the concerted action of
mankind becomes more and more harmonious, in proportion as we discover
new truths and as the number of individuals clearly seeing these
truths increases. The action of a hundred persons, each knowing a
thousand truths, or facts, would be more harmonious than would be the
actions of a hundred persons, fifty of whom know each a thousand facts
and fifty know only seven hundred each; or than if each of the hundred
individuals know only eight hundred facts each. Let us further
illustrate this agreement and disagreement of mankind; also let us
exemplify how conspicuous some truths are and how obscure and complex
others are.
All mankind are in pursuit of the greatest happiness, either
consciously or unconsciously, whether that happiness is to be enjoyed
here or in some supposed unknown world. But all believe in this
fundamental axiom. Perhaps all men of mature age agree that fire
burns. Our experience of fire has established quite an exact
correspondence between the subjective order of our conceptions and the
objective order of the relations among things and our nervous system.
All sane persons believe that food is necessary for the sustenance of
the human body. We all agree here. We all know of some relations
existing between water and the human organism; we know that we cannot
breathe it like air.
The truth, or the relation existing between a drowning man and the
altitude of Mt. Everest, is not so conspicuous as the example cited
before; yet there is a relation between them. The man falling in the
ocean from the shore, tends to raise the water of the ocean in a
similar manner as a turnip thrown in a pail partly filled with water,
raises the water in the pail. Mountains are measured from the sea
level. A high sea level makes a low mountain, and a low sea level
makes a high mountain. This relation is truth, but we do not all see
it.
One, or at least a few burns, is generally sufficient to convince us
that fire always burns; and when we are burned we always find it out,
for the pain is directly communicated to the nervous system. But there
are many reasons why we do not all know the relations between the
drowning man and the altitude of Mt. Everest. In the first place, the
rise of the water in the ocean is so slight that no human eye can see
it. No direct observation can ascertain it. Again, there are not many
men drowned. Again, nobody is watching for the rise of the water. We
can only know it by reasoning up to it from a general principle; and
you know that reasoning, in your present intellectual stage, is, as a
whole, not very agreeable to the minds of the masses who are only
seeking to keep the fierce wolf of poverty away from their door. Those
are some of the reasons.
There is a relation between the size of Ireland and the length of the
earth s day. The centrifugal force at the equator increases as the day
is shortened. If the day were half as long as now, the water would
tend to accumulate at the equator by virtue of the increased
centrifugal force. Ireland is situated not far from the North Pole,
and with increased centrifugal force at the equator, the water would
recede from its present shore, which would increase the size of
Ireland. If the day were lengthened to forty-eight hours, Ireland
would be, perhaps, entirely submerged.
So we find a relation existing between the whole course of nature;
between star and planet; the body and the food we eat; the soil and
our life; the male and the female; the residence and our health; labor
and our garments; truth and happiness.
With these preliminary remarks in our mind, let us see whether we can
trace and combine the two great phenomena happiness and truth.
Happiness may be represented as being the power which initiates and
guides our course of action; and an organism which is at rest would
never move again, if, by remaining quiet, it found from time to time
greater happiness. Truth may be represented as being a path which
leads a sentient organism in complete harmony with the facts of the
universe. There are countless other paths besides the path of Truth,
which a sentient being may travel, but there is only one the path of
Truth which rewards the traveler with the greatest happiness, while
all the countless others punish him with more or less misery, and
sometimes with instantaneous death.
If it be true, then, that all sentient organisms are in pursuit of
the greatest happiness, and that happiness can be attained only by
traveling on the path of Truth, all sentient creatures, whether human
beings or inferior animals, would be traveling the path of Truth only,
if they possessed sufficient intelligence always to ascertain that
path. For, traveling on any other path, would sooner or later be
attended with pain; and would there fore be a contradiction in terms
to the proposition that all sentient beings are in pursuit of the
greatest happiness, which is only realized completely when all the
desires of the organisms are satisfied. If, then, the foregoing
conclusions are true, and they have stood the test of the keenest
scientific inquiry on our globe for ages, all misery, pain, wrong,
evil, or whatever we may name it, must be ascribed to ignorance; and
this proposition is substantiated by the application of every known
psychological fact. To illustrate:
A little child may be actuated to put its hand against a
red hot stove, because it is ignorant of the relations existing
between the sensitive hand and the hot stove; but after it has
learned the true relations, it will not do it any more. A savage may
attempt to stop a running locomotive, by standing on the track; but
after he has learned its immense momentum, he will cease trying it.
A people, during a certain stage of intellectual culture, may live
in cities; but after they have learned the evils and uselessness of
cities, no one will live in them. With a certain amount of.
intelligence, man endeavors to make himself happy by antagonizing
the happiness of others; but as soon as he discovers that a greater
happiness can be attained by building our own happiness on the
happiness of our fellowman, all antagonism disappears. Some of these
truths we can see conspicuously with a little intelligence, while
others are very obscure and require a vast amount of it. But no
matter how conspicuous or how obscure, just as soon as we learn that
we derive greater happiness by doing right, or by following Truth,
we will follow it, for its own reward, wherever we see it, and just
that far all persons agree.
[A]s we ascend in the scale of animal creation, the faculties of each
organism increase in number and in complexity. The hog … has more
and higher faculties than the snail. The ape has more and higher
faculties than the hog. The savage has more and higher ones than the
ape. And the highly cultivated person has more and higher ones than
the savage. Each additional faculty, as we ascend in the scale of
animal being, brings also new and higher desires, so that a being
which is endowed with many and with complex faculties, has also many
and high desires to satisfy. But we must remember that the ability to
satisfy desires increases in a greater ratio than the desires increase
in number and in complexity.
Now, then, we get to the main point, which is: Each satisfied faculty
contributes its amount of happiness in proportion to its complexity of
the desire; so that a being which has numerous and complex desires,
and has them all satisfied, is immeasurably happier than a being which
has but a few and simple desires, which are also all satisfied. Each
faculty, then, is a track, so to speak, on which loads of happiness of
different value are coming into consciousness.
Now, I think we can easily see why it is that a highly enlightened
person, other things being equal, is happier than an ignorant,
superstitious one. The enlightened person has several advantages over
the ignorant one. First, the enlightened person understands the
phenomena of nature better, which enables him to march more in harmony
with facts, by which he escapes the natural penalty of discord, and
reaps the reward of harmony. And, secondly, the informed person lives
in a vast mental world, bounded only by telescopic stars located in
the remote regions of the universe. His extended world contains
countless, admirable things, the admiration of each of which brings
him a flood of happiness; while the unenlightened, superstitious
person lives in a very contracted mental world bounded by
superstitious fear, over which boundary he dares not pass. His small
world contains only a few things from which he receives happiness by
admiring them, and even these few things he understands so imperfectly
that he is continually punished by nature for running cross-grained
with facts. The foregoing conclusion is also confirmed by the
evolution point of view. For if the greatest happiness is our highest
aim and end, a complex being could not have evolved from a simpler
one, if the complex organism were not enjoying a greater happiness
than the more ignorant or inferior one.
After the foregoing contemplation, we can easily see that each
organism, according to its degree of development, has a particular
environment in which all its desires can be most nearly satisfied. A
savage, with his mental constitution, would find no delight in living
a civilized life in an elegantly furnished residence; his position
would not correspond with his faculties and desires, and before he
could enjoy a splendid parlor, his desires will have to be changed. An
ape would find no happiness in following the habits of a hog; and a
hog could not live in the environment of a fish, neither could the
masses of your people, with their present desires and amount of
intelligence, if transferred to our world, enjoy the free, kind, and
rich society of Mars. They would feel as awkward there as the savage
would feel in your parlor. Intelligence, personal and ancestral,
determines the whole course of animal activity. Every animal and every
man acts just as good, and no better, as the amount of his
intelligence compels him to act. And no one s course of action,
whether considered good or bad, can be changed permanently without the
mental assimilation of additional knowledge. A clear and thorough
knowledge of this important truth by all would forever banish every
vestige of human cruelty from the face of the earth.
[A]n organism is completely happy only when all its desires are fully
satisfied; but, as a whole, our desires can never be completely
satisfied. This, I think, can be best understood by bearing in mind
that the higher beings according to the doctrine of evolution have
been evolved from lower organisms by the pressure of environment, by
competition, by the survival of the fittest. Our environment is
continuously pressing us, by the survival of the fittest, etc., into
higher and higher planes, which require a continuous adjustment of
ourselves with our environment, and this continuous adjustment and
pressure involves incomplete satisfaction. There will, then, always
remain abundance of scope for our healthful ambition, both in the
direction of physical structure and mental powers. No matter how
physically perfect a person may be in bodily structure, strength,
endurance and agility, we can conceive of one who is still his
superior. And no matter how learned a person may be, his field of
thought is always bounded; and this boundary always implies a region
outside of the sphere of his thought, which can never be co-extensive
and identical with infinity.
CONTENTS
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