SEMI-PARASITISM.
"The Situation that has not its Duty, its
Ideal, was never yet occupied by man. Yes, here, in this poor, miserable,
hampered, despicable Actual, wherein thou even now standest, here or nowhere is
thy Ideal: work it out therefrom; and working, believe, live, be free."
CARLYLE.
" Work out your own salvation."--Paul.
"Any new set of conditions occurring to an animal
which render its food and safety very easily attained, seem to lead as a rule
to degeneration."--E. Ray Lankester.
PARASITES are the paupers of Nature. They are
forms of life which will not take the trouble to find their own food, but
borrow or steal it from the more industrious. So deep-rooted is this tendency
in Nature, that plants may become parasitic--it is an acquired habit--as well
as animals; and both are found in every state of beggary, some doing a little
for themselves, while others, more abject, refuse even to prepare their own
food.
There are certain plants--the Dodder, for
instance --which begin life with the best intentions, strike true roots into
the soil, and really appear as if they meant to be independent for life. But
after supporting themselves for a brief period they fix curious sucking discs
into the stem and branches of adjacent plants And after a little experimenting,
the epiphyte finally ceases to do anything for its own support, thenceforth
drawing all its supplies readymade from the sap of its host. In this parasitic
state it has no need for organs of nutrition of its own, and Nature therefore
takes them away. Henceforth, to the botanist, the adult Dodder presents the
degraded spectacle of a plant without a root, without a twig, without a leaf,
and having a stem so useless as to be inadequate to bear its own weight.
In the Mistletoe the parasitic habit has reached
a stage in some respects lower still. It has persisted in the downward course
for so many generations that the young forms even have acquired the habit and
usually begin life at once as parasites. The Mistletoe berries, which contain
the seed of the future plant, are developed specially to minister to this
degeneracy, for they glue themselves to the branches of some neighbouring oak
or apple, and there the young Mistletoe starts as a dependent from the
first.
Among animals these lazzaroni are more
largely represented still. Almost every animal is a living poor-house, and
harbours one or more species of epizoa or entozoa, supplying them
gratis, not only with a permanent home, but with all the necessaries and
luxuries of life.
Why does the naturalist think hardly of the
parasites? Why does he speak of them as degraded, and despise them as the most
ignoble creatures in Nature? What more can an animal do than eat, drink, and
die to-morrow? If under the fostering care and protection of a higher organism
it can eat better, drink more easily, live more merrily, and die, perhaps, not
till the day after, why should it not do so? Is parasitism, after all, not a
somewhat clever ruse? Is it not an ingenious way of securing the
benefits of life while evading its responsibilities? And although this mode of
livelihood is selfish, and possibly undignified, can it be said that it is
immoral?
The naturalist's reply to this is brief.
Parasitism, he will say, is one of the gravest crimes in Nature. It is a breach
of the law of Evolution. Thou shalt evolve, thou shalt develop all thy
faculties to the full, thou shalt attain to the highest conceivable perfection
of thy race--and so perfect thy race--this is the first and greatest
commandment of Nature. But the parasite has no thought for its race, or for
perfection in any shape or form. It wants two things--food and shelter. How it
gets them is of no moment. Each member lives exclusively on its own account, an
isolated, indolent, selfish, and backsliding life.
The remarkable thing is that Nature permits the
community to be taxed in this way apparently without protest. For the parasite
is a consumer pure and simple. And the "Perfect Economy of Nature" is surely
for once at fault when it encourages species numbered by thousands which
produce nothing for their own or for the general good, but live, and live
luxuriously, at the expense of others?
Now when we look into the matter, we very soon
perceive that instead of secretly countenancing this ingenious device by which
parasitic animals and plants evade the great law of the Struggle for Life,
Nature sets her face most sternly against it. And, instead of allowing the
transgressors to slip through her fingers, as one might at first suppose, she
visits upon them the most severe and terrible penalties. The parasite, she
argues, not only injures itself, but wrongs others. It disobeys the fundamental
law of its own being, and taxes the innocent to contribute to its disgrace. So
that if Nature is just, if Nature has an avenging hand, if she holds one vial
of wrath more full and bitter than another, it shall surely be poured out upon
those who are guilty of this double sin. Let us see what form this punishment
takes.
Observant visitors to the sea-side, or let us say
to an aquarium, are familiar with those curious little creatures known as
Hermit-crabs. The peculiarity of the Hermits is that they take up their abode
in the cast-off shell of some other animal, not unusually the whelk; and here,
like Diogenes in his tub, the creature lives a solitary, but by no means an
inactive life.
The Paguras, however, is not a parasite.
And yet although in no sense of the word a parasite, this way of inhabiting
throughout life a house built by another animal approaches so closely the
parasitic habit, that we shall find it instructive as a preliminary
illustration, to consider the effect of this free-house policy on the occupant.
There is no doubt, to begin with, that, as has been already indicated, the
habit is an acquired one. In its general anatomy the Hermit is essentially a
crab. Now the crab is an animal which, from the nature of its environment, has
to lead a somewhat rough and perilous life. Its days are spent amongst jagged
rocks and boulders. Dashed about by every wave, attacked on every side by
monsters of the deep, the crustacean has to protect itself by developing a
strong and serviceable coat of mail.
How best to protect themselves has been the
problem to which the whole crab family have addressed themselves; and, in
considering the matter, the ancestors of the Hermit-crab hit on the happy
device of re-utilising the habitations of the molluscs which lay around them in
plenty, well-built, and ready for immediate occupation. For generations and
generations accordingly, the Hermit-crab has ceased to exercise itself upon
questions of safety, and dwells in its little shell as proudly and securely as
if its second-hand house were a fortress erected especially for its private
use.
Wherein, then, has the Hermit suffered for this
cheap, but real solution of a practical difficulty? Whether its laziness costs
it any moral qualms, or whether its cleverness becomes to it a source of
congratulation, we do not know; but judged from the appearance the animal makes
under the searching gaze of the zoologist, its expedient is certainly not one
to be commended. To the eye of Science its sin is written in the plainest
characters on its very organization. It has suffered in its own anatomical
structure just by as much as it has borrowed from an external source. Instead
of being a perfect crustacean it has allowed certain important parts of its
body to deteriorate. And several vital organs are partially or wholly
atrophied.
Its sphere of life also is now seriously limited;
and by a cheap expedient to secure safety, it has fatally lost its
independence. It is plain from its anatomy that the Hermit-crab was not always
a Hermit-crab. It was meant for higher things. Its ancestors doubtless were
more or less perfect crustaceans, though what exact stage of development was
reached before the hermit habit became fixed in the species we cannot tell. But
from the moment the creature took to relying on an external source, it began to
fall. It slowly lost in its own person all that it now draws from external
aid.
As an important item in the day's work, namely,
the securing of safety and shelter, was now guaranteed to it, one of the chief
inducements to a life of high and vigilant effort was at the same time
withdrawn. A number of functions, in fact, struck work. The whole of the parts,
therefore, of the complex organism which ministered to these functions, from
lack of exercise, or total disuse, became gradually feeble; and ultimately, by
the stern law that an unused organ must suffer a slow but inevitable atrophy,
the creature not only lost all power of motion in these parts, but lost the
parts themselves, and otherwise sank into a relatively degenerate condition.
Every normal crustacean, on the other hand, has
the abdominal region of the body covered by a thick chitinous shell. In the
Hermits this is represented only by a thin and delicate membrane--of which the
sorry figure the creature cuts when drawn from its foreign hiding-place is
sufficient evidence. Any one who now examines further this half-naked and
woebegone object, will perceive also that the fourth and fifth pair of limbs
are either so small and wasted as to be quite useless or altogether
rudimentary; and, although certainly the additional development of the
extremity of the tail into an organ for holding on to its extemporised retreat
may be regarded as a slight compensation, it is clear from the whole structure
of the animal that it has allowed itself to undergo severe Degeneration.
In dealing with the Hermit-crab, in short, we are
dealing with a case of physiological backsliding. That the creature has lost
anything by this process from a practical point of view is not now argued. It
might fairly be shown, as already indicated, that its freedom is impaired by
its cumbrous eko-skeleton, and that, in contrast with other crabs, who lead a
free and roving life, its independence generally is greatly limited. But from
the physiological standpoint, there is no question that the Hermit tribe have
neither discharged their responsibilities to Nature nor to themselves. If the
end of life is merely to escape death, and serve themselves, possibly they have
done well; but if it is to attain an ever increasing perfection, then are they
backsliders indeed.
A zoologist's verdict would be that by this act
they have forfeited to some extent their place in the animal scale. An animal
is classed as low or high according as it is adapted to less or more complex
conditions of life. This is the true standpoint from which to judge all living
organisms. Were perfection merely a matter of continual eating and drinking,
the Amoeba--the lowest known organism--might take rank with the highest, Man,
for the one nourishes itself and saves its skin almost as completely as the
other. But judged by the higher standard of Complexity, that is, by greater or
lesser adaptation to more or less complex conditions, the gulf between them is
infinite.
We have now received a preliminary idea, although
not from the study of a true parasite, of the essential principles involved in
parasitism. And we may proceed to point out the correlative in the moral and
spiritual spheres. We confine ourselves for the present to one point. The
difference between the Hermit-crab and a true parasite is, that the former has
acquired a semi-parasitic habit only with reference to safety. It may be
that the Hermit devours as a preliminary the accommodating mollusc whose
tenement it covets; but it would become a real parasite only on the supposition
that the whelk was of such size as to keep providing for it throughout life,
and that the external and internal organs of the crab should disappear, while
it lived henceforth, by simple imbibation, upon the elaborated juices of its
host. All the mollusc provides, however, for the crustacean in this instance is
safety, and, accordingly in the meantime we limit our application to this. The
true parasite presents us with an organism so much more degraded in all its
parts, that its lessons may well be reserved until we have paved the way to
understand the deeper bearings of the subject.
The spiritual principle to be illustrated in the
meantime stands thus: Any principle which secures the safety of the
individual without personal effort or the vital exercise of faculty is
disastrous to moral character. We do not begin by attempting to define
words. Were we to define truly what is meant by safety or salvation, we should
be spared further elaboration, and the law would stand out as a sententious
common-place. But we have to deal with the ideas of safety as these are
popularly held, and the chief purpose at this stage is to expose what may be
called the Parasitic Doctrine of Salvation. The phases of religious experience
about to be described may be unknown to many. It remains for those who are
familiar with the religious conceptions of the masses to determine whether or
not we are wasting words.
What is meant by the Parasitic Doctrine of
Salvation one may, perhaps, best explain by sketching two of its leading types.
The first is the doctrine of the Church of Rome; the second, that represented
by the narrower Evangelical Religion. We take these religions, however, not in
their ideal form, with which possibly we should have little quarrel, but in
their practical working, or in the form in which they are held especially by
the rank and file of those who belong respectively to these communions. For the
strength or weakness of any religious system is best judged from the form in
which it presents itself to, and influences the common mind.
No more perfect or more sad example of
semi-parasitism exists than in the case of those illiterate thousands who,
scattered everywhere throughout the habitable globe, swell the lower ranks of
the Church of Rome. Had an organization been specially designed, indeed, to
induce the parasitic habit in the souls of men, nothing better fitted to its
disastrous end could be established than the system of Roman Catholicism. Roman
Catholicism offers to the masses a molluscan shell. They have simply to shelter
themselves within its pale, and they are "safe." But what is this "safe"? It is
an external safety--the safety of an institution. It is a salvation recommended
to men by all that appeals to the motives in most common use with the vulgar
and the superstitious, but which has as little vital connection with the
individual soul as the dead whelk's shell with the living Hermit. Salvation is
a relation at once vital, personal, and spiritual. This is mechanical and
purely external. And this is of course the final secret of its marvellous
success and worldwide power. A cheap religion is the desideratum of the human
heart; and an assurance of salvation at the smallest possible cost forms the
tempting bait held out to a conscience-stricken world by the Romish Church.
Thousands, therefore, who have never been taught to use their faculties in
"working out their own salvation," thousands who will not exercise themselves
religiously, and who yet cannot be without the exercises of religion, intrust
themselves in idle faith to that venerable house of refuge which for centuries
has stood between God and man. A Church which has harboured generations of the
elect, whose archives enshrine the names of saints whose foundations are
consecrated with martyrs' blood--shall it not afford a sure asylum still for
any soul which would make its peace with God? So, as the Hermit into the
molluscan shell, creeps the poor soul within the pale of Rome, seeking, like
Adam in the garden, to hide its nakedness from God.
Why does the true lover of men restrain not his
lips in warning his fellows against this and all other priestly religions? It
is not because he fails to see the prodigious energy of the Papal See, or to
appreciate the many noble types of Christian manhood nurtured within its pale.
Nor is it because its teachers are often corrupt and its system of doctrine
inadequate as a representation of the Truth--charges which have to be made more
or less against all religions. But it is because it ministers falsely to the
deepest need of man, reduces the end of religion to selfishness, and offers
safety without spirituality. That these, theoretically, are its pretensions, we
do not affirm; but that its practical working is to induce in man, and in its
worst forms, the parasitic habit, is testified by results. No one who has
studied the religion of the Continent upon the spot, has failed to be impressed
with the appalling spectacle of tens of thousands of unregenerate men
sheltering themselves, as they conceive it for Eternity, behind the Sacraments
of Rome.
There is no stronger evidence of the inborn
parasitic tendency in man in things religious than the absolute complacency
with which even cultured men will hand over their eternal interests to the care
of a Church. We can never dismiss from memory the sadness with which we once
listened to the confession of a certain foreign professor: "I used to be
concerned about religion," he said in substance, " but religion is a great
subject. I was very busy; there was little time to settle it for myself. A
Protestant, my attention was called to the Roman Catholic religion. It suited
my case. And instead of dabbling in religion for myself I put myself in its
hands. Once a year," he concluded, "I go to mass." These were the words of one
whose work will live in the history of his country, one, too, who knew all
about parasitism. Yet, though he thought it not, this is parasitism in its
worst and most degrading form. Nor, in spite of its intellectual, not to say
moral sin, is this an extreme or exceptional case. It is a case, which is being
duplicated every day in our own country, only here the confession is expressed
with a candour which is rare in company with actions betraying so signally the
want of it.
The form of parasitism exhibited by a certain
section of the narrower Evangelical school is altogether different from that of
the Church of Rome. The parasite in this case seeks its shelter, not in a
Church, but in a Doctrine or a Creed. Let it be observed again that we are not
dealing with the Evangelical Religion, but only with one of its parasitic
forms--a form which will at once be recognised by all who know the popular
Protestantism of this country. We confine ourselves also at present to that
form which finds its encouragement in a single doctrine, that doctrine being
the Doctrine of the Atonement--let us say, rather, a perverted form of this
central truth.
The perverted Doctrine of the Atonement, which
tends to beget the parasitic habit, may be defined in a single sentence--it is
very much because it can be defined in a single sentence that it is a
perversion. Let us state it in a concrete form. It is put to the individual in
the following syllogism: "You believe Christ died for sinners; you are a
sinner; therefore Christ died for you; and hence you are saved." Now
what is this but another species of molluscan shell? Could any trap for a
benighted soul be more ingeniously planned? It is not superstition that is
appealed to this time; it is reason. The agitated soul is invited to creep into
the convolutions of a syllogism, and entrench itself behind a Doctrine more
venerable even than the Church. But words are mere chitine. Doctrines may have
no more vital contact with the soul than priest or sacrament, no further
influence on life and character than stone and lime. And yet the apostles of
parasitism pick a blackguard from the streets, pass him through this plausible
formula, and turn him out a convert in the space of as many minutes as it takes
to tell it.
The zeal of these men, assuredly, is not to be
questioned: their instincts are right, and their work is often not in vain. It
is possible, too, up to a certain point, to defend this Salvation by Formula.
Are these not the very words of Scripture? Did not Christ Himself say, "It is
finished"? And is it not written, "By grace are ye saved through faith," "Not
of works, lest any man should boast," and "He that believeth on the Son hath
everlasting life"? To which, however, one might also answer in the words of
Scripture, "The Devils also believe," and "Except a man be born again he cannot
see the Kingdom of God." But without seeming to make text refute text, let us
ask rather what the supposed convert possesses at the end of the process. That
Christ saves sinners, even blackguards from the streets, is a great fact; and
that the simple words of the street evangelist do sometimes bring this home to
man with convincing power is also a fact. But in ordinary circumstances, when
the inquirer's mind is rapidly urged through the various stages of the above
piece of logic, he is left to face the future and blot out the past with a
formula of words.
To be sure these words may already convey a germ
of truth, they may yet be filled in with a wealth of meaning and become a
lifelong power. But we would state the case against Salvation by Formula with
ignorant and unwarranted clemency did we for a moment convey the idea that this
is always the actual result. The doctrine plays too well into the hands of the
parasitic tendency to make it possible that in more than a minority of cases
the result is anything but disastrous. And it is disastrous not in that, sooner
or later, after losing half their lives, those who rely on the naked syllogism
come to see their mistake, but in that thousands never come to see it at all.
Are there not men who can prove to you and to the world, by the irresistible
logic of texts, that they are saved, whom you know to be not only unworthy of
the Kingdom of God-- which we all are--but absolutely incapable of entering it?
The condition of membership in the Kingdom of God is well known; who fulfil
this condition and who do not, is not well known. And yet the moral test, in
spite of the difficulty of its applications, will always, and rightly, be
preferred by the world to the theological. Nevertheless, in spite of the
world's verdict, the parasite is content. He is "safe." Years ago his mind
worked through a certain chain of phrases in which the words "believe" and
"saved" were the conspicuous terms. And from that moment, by all Scriptures, by
all logic, and by all theology, his future was guaranteed. He took out, in
short, an insurance policy, by which he was infallibly secured eternal life at
death. This is not a matter to make light of. We wish we were caricaturing
instead of representing things as they are. But we carry with us all who
intimately know the spiritual condition of the Narrow Church in asserting that
in some cases at least its members have nothing more to show for their religion
than a formula, a syllogism, a cant phrase or an experience of some kind which
happened long ago, and which men told them at the time was called Salvation.
Need we proceed to formulate objections to the parasitism of Evangelicalism?
Between it and the Religion of the Church of Rome there is an affinity as real
as it is unsuspected. For one thing these religions are spiritually disastrous
as well as theologically erroneous in propagating a false conception of
Christianity. The fundamental idea alike of the extreme Roman Catholic and
extreme Evangelical Religions is Escape. Man's chief end is to "get off." And
all factors in religion, the highest and most sacred, are degraded to this
level. God, for example, is a Great Lawyer. Or He is the Almighty Enemy; it is
from Him we have to "get off." Jesus Christ is the One who gets us off--a
theological figure who contrives so to adjust matters federally that the way is
clear. The Church in the one instance is a kind of conveyancing office where
the transaction is duly concluded, each party accepting the other's terms; in
the other case, a species of sheep-pen where the flock awaits impatiently and
indolently the final consummation. Generally, the means are mistaken for the
end, and the opening-up of the possibility of spiritual growth becomes the
signal to stop growing.
Second, these being cheap religions, are
inevitably accompanied by a cheap life. Safety being guaranteed from the first,
there remains nothing else to be done. The mechanical way in which the
transaction is effected, leaves the soul without stimulus, and the character
remains untouched by the moral aspects of the sacrifice of Christ. He who is
unjust is unjust still; he who is unholy is unholy still. Thus the whole scheme
ministers to the Degeneration of Organs. For here, again, by just as much as
the organism borrows mechanically from an external source, by so much exactly
does it lose in its own organization. Whatever rest is provided by Christianity
for the children of God, it is certainly never contemplated that it should
supersede personal effort. And any rest which ministers to indifference is
immoral and unreal--it makes parasites and not men. Just because God worketh in
him, as the evidence and triumph of it, the true child of God works out his own
salvation--works it out having really received it--not as a light thing, a
superfluous labour, but with fear and trembling as a reasonable and
indispensable service.
If it be asked, then, shall the parasite be saved
or shall he not, the answer is that the idea of salvation conveyed by the
question makes a reply all but hopeless. But if by salvation is meant, a
trusting in Christ in order to likeness to Christ, in order to that
holiness without which no man shall see the Lord, the reply is that the
parasite's hope is absolutely vain. So far from ministering to growth,
parasitism ministers to decay. So far from ministering to holiness, that is to
wholeness, parasitism ministers to exactly the opposite. One by one the
spiritual faculties droop and die, one by one from lack of exercise the muscles
of the soul grow weak and flaccid, one by one the moral activities cease. So
from him that hath not, is taken away that which he hath, and after a few years
of parasitism there is nothing left to save.
If our meaning up to this point has been
sufficiently obscure to make the objection now possible that this protest
against Parasitism is opposed to the doctrines of Free Grace, we cannot hope in
a closing sentence to free the argument from a suspicion so ill-judged. The
adjustment between Faith and Works does not fall within our province now.
Salvation truly is the free gift of God, but he who really knows how much this
means knows--and just because it means so much--how much of consequent action
it involves. With the central doctrines of grace the whole scientific argument
is in too wonderful harmony to be found wanting here. The natural life, not
less than the eternal, is the gift of God. But life in either case is the
beginning of growth and not the end of grace. To pause where we should begin,
to retrograde where we should advance, to seek a mechanical security that we
may cover inertia and find a wholesale salvation in which there is no personal
sanctification--this is Parasitism.