EVOLUTION AND IDEALISM:
WILFRED CAMPBELL'S "THE TRAGEDY OF
MAN" AND ITS PLACE IN CANADIAN
INTELLECTUAL HISTORY
LAUREL BOONE
At the end of the nineteenth century, and until the Great War, the dominant philosophy in Canada was a special kind of Christian Idealism. Developed by men such as George Paxton Young and John Watson, this outlook suffused the intellectual and spiritual lives, not just of philosophers, but also of the intelligent reading public. Discoveries in the physical and life sciences commonly lumped under the headings of "evolution" and "Darwinism" troubled Canadian idealists grievously, for, from an empirical point of view, such discoveries clearly held much truth, and yet they fell so far short of providing a complete and satisfying world picture that they could not by themselves command belief. Leslie Armour and Elizabeth Trott, in their invaluable study The Faces of Reason, point out that under such circumstances "philosopjy seems a natural activity," and that the system-building methods of late nineteenth-century idealists were well suited to the task of resolving into coherence the myriad contradictions apparent to any intelligent and sensitive person.1
Wilfred Campbell responded publicly to the controversy surrounding evolution and Darwinism by writing poems touching on the subject of man's origin, but privately his response was so much more elaborate that it must have amounted to an obsession: he wrote a twenty-two chapter monograph called "The Tragedy of Man."2 This 35,000 word treatise describes the process by which man received his spiritual nature and the repercussions of this theory in all aspects of human life, both individual and collective. It remains in the Lome Pierce Collection, Queen's University Archives, in four folders of material: notes, outlines, drafts, full chapters and typescripts. The treatise is substantially complete, but only the first four of the twenty-two manuscript chapters have been revised and typed. The other eighteen are only in manuscript; some of them are partially revised and others are not.
It is impossible to say when Campbell began his treatise. He jotted a plan for it on stationery with the letterhead "Presidence du Conseil, Canada. Ottawa, 1896." As a Privy Council clerk he would have been free to appropriate this stationery after 1900. The problems posed by ideas of human evolution had bothered Campbell since the early 1890s, but, since the poems quoted in "The Tragedy of Man" do not antedate 1903, it seems most likely that Campbell began the actual writing of the treatise around that time. Similarly, it is impossible to tell when Campbell ceased working on his treatise. The Great War and his new home on the outskirts of Ottawa occupied him so strenuously after 1914 that he could have found little time to work on his theory. Furthermore, it is unlikely that he could have written such a document without mentioning the disaster which human nature had brought upon itself by 1914, but nothing about the War appears in "The Tragedy of Man." Certainly he worked on it most diligently from about 1907 until perhaps 1912. On March 25, 1908, he lectured before the Ottawa Literary and Scientific Society on "Darwinism and the Destiny of Man." Only the manuscript preface and a newspaper report now remain of this lecture, but they show that it summarized the theory at the heart of the treatise.3 In the Preface of "Mordred" in Poetical Tragedies, published in 1908, Campbell refers to a theory of mythology "which I am dealing with in a work treating of the origin of mankind.4 A diary entry for March 2, 1910, says, "I would like to slowly finish my work 'The Divine Origin of Man' and then write an epic on the subject." In November of that year he began his epic, but he probably did not finish the treatise first.5 The Scotsman in Canada, published in 1911, includes the comment, "Sufficient is it to assert, as a well-authenticated fact, the Divine origin of man, which the present writer hopes to deal with in a future volume."6
No part of "The Tragedy of Man" was ever published, and because of its rough state it is probably unpublishable. The following summary articulates the theory itself and shows the range of subjects to which Campbell applied it and the evidence he used to support his conclusions.
Proem: "The Tragedy of Man"7
Ts. Chapter 1: "Man's Destiny and Origin are One"
Preface: "My Creed" (CP 50, PW 157)
The supreme question, and of the greatest and most lasting interest to man, is the problem of the immorality of the human soul ... [I]ts true solution is closely related to that other great mystery which surrounds the origin of man. When we solve the one, we will explain the other ... [Darwinism] lowered the great origin of mankind as expressed in creation to the level of a mere stock-breeding experiment, started by accident and controlled by chance ... It is, in short, evolution from the brutal to the intellectual by a gradual process of selection and making of man a mere developed ape.
Materialism arises from "such a purely physical outlook upon, and explanation of life and its destiny." If man is understood to be only a higher class of animal, the consequent "looking down and back to the clod" will bring about inconceivable degradation. Therefore Darwinism alone is dangerous. Actually, Darwinism is a half-truth.
I have come to believe firmly that there is as much evidence, in the history of man upon this earth, in nature, and in the humanity now existing, to prove that man has descended in the scale of existence as there is that he has risen. The object, therefore, of this thesis is to prove, from a wide variety of sources, that the civilized man, as we find him today, in the greater races, is not
"A mere, last coil,
In the blind evolution of time,"
but is the result of a mingling of the stock of the risen and the fallen man; Also that the story of the fall is as true and as scientific a fact as that which claims that man has risen from the lower species, only of vastly greater significance.
The Biblical account of creation plus Darwinism yield a golden mean, for "the Biblical account is Mr. Darwin's idea plus something exceedingly more tremendous and remarkable." Therefore, this treatise will remind people of their godlike origin and thus help them to return to "the immortal and the primally divine."
Ts. Chapter 2: "The Fall"
There is strong evidence to prove that the higher races of mankind are and were the result of a fusion, at some remote period, of a mysterious race of beings of loftier origin and condition, with a lower, autochtonous or purely earth race, who were possibly evolved from the lower creation.
The higher race, the "Sons of God" mentioned in Genesis, parallels the race of giants or demi-gods from which many cultures trace their ancestors, and the lower race, the "sons of men" in Genesis, is equivalent to Plato's "earth men." Mating between these two races brought about the Fall. "[S]trong proof of this is to be found in all realms of human research such as history, ethnology, tradition, mythology, archaeology, religion, philosophy, literature and science; and also in man's own inner nature, experience, beliefs, ideals and longings." First Judaism and then Christianity have taught the essential truth of this theory, and now the British, the greatest of peoples, are the carriers of this truth. The highest proof of the doctrine is its high ethical quality: Genesis 3:7-24 dramatizes the central human question of good, evil and guilt.
It reveals a sense of the truly supernatural, beside which all the so-called miracles pale into insignificance. Here man comes into touch with the unseen in a realm of the terribly pure and the inexorably just. Here the presence of deity is suggested in an atmosphere of awful whispering voices eternally reminding fallen human nature of the unattainable. This is a world where material science cannot follow, where the soul must walk alone and in awe as in a vast invisible temple.
Ts. Chapter 3: "The Ethnological Argument"
Preface: "To Britain," 11. 17-20 (B 1635)
All races claim divine origin; they also have common traditions of a long-past golden age and an island abode of the blessed, and they share certain religious rituals. Daniel Brinton, the great ethnologist, concluded that man did not develop gradually, but that he arrived on earth suddenly, somewhere near North Africa. Brinton could not complete his theory, however, because he ignored the fact of the Fall. Europe was civilized from Britain, an idea supported by traditions of civilization's having come from western islands and by the traces of "an ancient Titan civilization" at Avebury.
The great cousin races -- Jewish, Egyptian, British, Trojan, Greek, Carthaginian and Norse -- all had a common godlike progenitor: Noah. These races are superior to the lower, more earthy races because of their highly-developed ethical sense and because of their sense of responsibility not only to one another but also to the earth races. Their traditions and records "prove the past existence of a remote common civilization of so high and godlike a level that it has never been even approached in the history of the world since then."
Ts. Chapter 4: "The Historical Argument"
[This chapter is the revision of Ms. Chapter 8]
Preface: "Soul," 11. 126-30 (CP 58, PW 162)
All of the great races possess pedigrees of their ruling houses that reach back to the godlike race. The lineage of Jesus is traced back to Adam; the Welsh pedigree traces the British kings back to Bruto and the Trojans, who were coeval with the ancient Jews. Indeed, because the Greek race sprang from the Egyptian and the British from the Trojan, and because Egypt, Troy and Israel were the three Noachan colonies, the British and the Greek races are cousins to the Jewish race. It is also known that all crafts, arts and sciences are of great antiquity.
[I] perfection of the arts and sciences, refinements of life, knowledge of navigation and general culture and mental knowledge, men of the remote past were greatly our superiors. The whole spirit of all great peoples, as shown in their history, has been that of a desire to emulate the past. All of the, so-called, development of progress, has only been a working back to some god like morning of the world, or remote ideal implanted in that finer subtler race-memory which underlies the ruder community consciousness of all the ruling world races.
Ms. Chapter 4: "Archaeology and the Ancient Builders"
Preface: "The Soul's House," 11. 17-24 (CP 83, PW 174)
Some of the stone work in Egypt is still imitated; some, indeed, is not yet even understood. Masonry techniques have been handed down from the Egyptians through the Phoenicians, the Etruscans, the Britons, and thence to the Greeks. The British ruins are antediluvian and are parallel to the structures in the Central American cities of Copan and Palenque. "The farther we go back in time through the ages, the evidence of the world's builders, and their vast and wonderfully designed structures goes to show that man has fallen from some once godlike high estate."
Ms. Chapter 5: "The Argument from Mythology"
Preface: [9 lines from an unidentified poem]
That myth is imaginary and has never had any reality outside the human imagination is a common but false belief. According to that conclusion,
the creation of man and the earth and all on it-the accounts of superhuman beings coming to this earth for benign purposes; the communication of superior men with outside beings, called gods or angels; the idea of God himself down the whole vast range of miracle and prodigy, giant and pygmy, cyclops, mermen, salamanders, dragons, fairies, elfs, and a myriad host from Prometheus to the God Pan, not to mention the miracles of Holy Scriptures ... are but a sort of nightmare, dream or pipe dream of the centuried self-delusion of a creature called man, who has no real link with the eternal but is merely a sort of self-glorified ape.
Actually, myth is "decayed or degenerate history." For example, the facts that science finds evidence of extinct monsters and that evolutionists discover and postulate unfamiliar kinds of creatures suggest that nature was formerly more various than it is now. The Prometheus story and the Chaldean accounts of the creation are but garbled versions of Genesis.
In our own times, we have evidence that humans used to be more powerful than they are today. So-called "supernatural" powers now possessed by only a few, used to be common; Prospero is an example of what man was formerly like. Indeed, "might not all of this explain genius in all of its phases? ... Might not this be but the still-smouldering, and, once god-like, powers bursting out at certain periods of the old loftier heredity in later more degenerate generations of certain of the great peoples having the divine ancestry?"
Ms. Chapter 6: "Literature, Music and the Arts: The Argument From Literature"
It is a remarkable fact that all of the greatest human literature is a part of antiquity and quite out of touch with all that is modern. In short it is all prehistoric either in text or in subject. Job, Homer, Shakespeare, Milton, all deal with subjects which connect man with the Gods, demi-gods, or the primal, elemental, and universal tragedy of the ancient peoples and the early world ... [The great works of literature] deal with and are part of a Promethean age of lofty struggle, when the godlike in self-sacrifice for some divine purpose, came down from the heaven to earth and took upon it the earthy and imperfect, and the infinite suffered and was caged in the prison of the finite so that the earthy might be likened to the heavenly, and the Caliban climb up to the level of Prospero. All this is seen in the revelation of Prospero and Caliban, the struggle between the divine and the earth heredity in the one human personality. And it is this struggle that is the great drama of man on this earth and it depends on us all as to which shall conquer.
"The language of poetry, called inspired, is no doubt but a harking back to the common speech of the Gods." Genius and greatness today demonstrate that "reversion to type" can occur upwards as well as downwards. Thus "Shakespeare was of the demi-gods and Turner has his spirit."
Ms. Chapter 7: "The Old Testament"
Preface: Lines on a Rereading of Parts of the Old Testament" (PW 284)
"Whether taken as 'the word of God' to man, or as a human literature, this collection of human documents, is the greatest ethical account of man and his relation to deity ever given to the world." It deals throughout with the struggle between the earth-man and the god-man in the individual and, more prominently, in communities. In the beginning, Adam and Eve communicated freely with "the outside celestial universe" and "higher beings who came to this earth and left it at will," for the supernatural is simply that which is outside the fallen nature we know.
Genesis reveals literally how the physical Fall took place-the mating between the godlike race and the earth race. The resulting hybrid race turned its semi-divinity to evil uses, and this brought about the Flood. "The holier element escaped and founded a new race, carrying the divine promise that, if the higher conquered the lower, the race would ultimately be restored to its pristine greatness." For this reason, individuals must work to let the higher nature conquer the lower, and the advanced races must help the lower races to restore the proper relation of "the race, the nation, the community, and the individual" to God.
Ms. Chapter 8: "Archaeology and the Ancient Builders"
[in revising Ms..Chapter 8 for Ts. Chapter 4, Campbell omitted the following ideas.] The winged bulls, sphinxes and similar relics of the great races of antiquity show how acutely they felt the struggle between the earthy and the godlike. Ancient British monuments also show the semi-divinity of their creators. In the name of freedom, democracy has destroyed castles, cathedrals, and other monuments of past greatness, but with industry it has created a greater tyranny.
Ms. Chapter 9: "The Graft"
Horticulture provides an analogy to human origin in the practice of grafting. The earth-race, sturdy and adapted for life on earth, was necessary as root-stock on which the divine race could be grafted.
We are anchored here, and are in our lower or primal side, brothers to the lower creation. But on our nobler greater side, we are supernatural in the highest and best sense. While we answer to a law, common to all the material creation about us, yet we also obey and are under and respond to a loftier law of being, which if we but allow our higher natures the mastery can, and will, place us on a plane of being which is supernatural to the material and physical laws that govern this world ... [O]ur real work or accomplishment and destiny is to reclaim that which was lost and link our life here, in some mysterious manner, with the divine or higher existence.
Ms. Chapter 10: "Woman and the Earth Origin"
Woman is more of the earth than man; she is more comfortable with her earthy nature, more in sympathy with earthy matters, and possesses more of earth's "primal qualities." She is not animalistic in the gross sense that man is, nor is she as spiritual, but she is "the real medium betwixt earth and heaven." Woman obtains her divine heredity through man, and it is man's duty to help her to develop her divine side. Man and woman are essentially one, and they must not permit "self-antagonism" between them. Religions which insist on celibacy as the highest state of earthly life are pernicious.
Ms. Chapter 11: "The Earth-Races at Their Best"
With stories of fairies, elves, trolls, and similar beings, mythology helps to explain what the ancient earth-races were like. Perfectly attuned to the earth, their greatest longing was to possess a soul. They had no sense of sin, and therefore they had no urge to strive upward. The lower races today are no longer pure, because they have been corrupted by the influence of higher races misusing their superiority.
Wordsworth and Arnold were mistaken when they sought rest, for no rest is possible while there is hope in the long journey back to God. If we succumb to modern cosmopolitanism, we will slide back toward the earthy, rather than consolidating and building on the gains our great ancestors made on that divine journey.
Ms. Chapter 12: "The Divine Source of Earth's Finer Flowers, Fruits and Grins"
The earth's vegetation, too, may be divided into the higher, sent from God, and the lower, native to earth. The wild, unchanging plants, many of which are rank and poisonous and grow in the tropics, are earthy; the decay of such plants produced today's coal deposits. The finer plants, those which grow at higher elevations and in temperate climates, are associated with civilization. The law of survival of the fittest provided suitable root stock for cross-fertilization or grafting with higher plants. Grains and useful plants such as flax are not "children of chance" but combinations of earth roots and divine cereals, a conclusion which mythology supports.
Ms. Chapter 13: "Religion, Literature, Art and Music are Witnesses of the Divine"
Religion and the fine arts link the great civilizations, past and present. Music, for instance, is a rediscovery of primal harmony. It is also supernatural in that it can be mesmeric, especially when joined with acting, a quality which may be, but is not necessarily, dangerous.
Ms. Chapter 14: "The Continuity of the Great Races, and the Divine and Earth Struggle in Them for the Mastery"
"Whenever a great race seems to disappear, it is a sign, either that the divine side of the race has left it to enter into, through colonization or emigration, another race, or that the earth-side has conquered the godlike element." The preceding chapters demonstrate that man's dual origin is evident in individuals and in society at all levels; these chapters have also traced the lineage of the different races on earth today. A society's leaders have more of the divine component in them than the other members of that society do, and therefore it is appropriate to judge a race or society by its leaders.
Ms. Chapter 15: "The Struggle Between the Divine or Immortal Influence with that of the More Earthly or Mortal Ego in the Spirit of Mankind"
In modern industrial society,
man has attempted rather to imitate nature's laws and as it were, replace them, than live closely to and obey them. The result has been that he as almost if not quite come to believe that he can improve on nature and interfere with the natural course of things for his own selfish and often purely material purposes. On this plane, the old ethical code is exchanged for the modern one of common sense and science.
This divorce from nature leads to a return to the soulless and hopeless mechanistic life of the pure earth-men. The greed that engenders the rapine of the forests, coalfields and other natural resources shows the strength of the lower side of human nature.
Ms. Chapter 16: "The Flood: Noah and the Great Earth's Religions"
Although the Flood was partial and not world wide, all of the semi-divine race of titans perished except Noah and his family. The world's great religions attest to this, and although they are now corrupt in varying degrees, all were once alike and pure.
Ms. Chapter 17: "The Mystery of the Soul and Sentient Being"
Preface: "Soul," 11. 98-100 (CP 58, PW 162); "The Lyre Degenerate," 11. 67-68 (CP 42, PW 148)
"All of life as we know it must cling to something, or be included in something, material." Even though man is a material creature, he "dwells daily hourly in a loftier plane for which the physical science of this world has no explanation." We must realize, too that "there are grades of this spiritual and root being and it is possible that in a more perfect system of nature than ours, there can be a more ideal root anchorage, a loftier material being, if we might call it, on which to graft the soul." The idea of beauty is godlike, and since the things of nature induce us to perceive beauty, they too are divine. Further, "there is no great beauty apart from use," if we only knew what the uses of all the plants might be. The problem is that "our present science is more chemical than general, more artificial than natural, with its consequent shrinking up or stretching of the human nature and character."
Ms. Chapter 18: "Religion Originally a Divine Mystery"
The hermetic and heiratic nature of ancient religions shows the gap between the masses, who were more earthy, and the elite or priesthood, who were more godlike. [The chapter concludes with a summary of "Belief of the Ancient Egyptians Respecting a Future State," by Rev. J. Douglas (1867)]
Ms. Chapter 19: Man's Part in the Universe"
"Nature ... never appeals at her highest except to the soul which is most deeply interested in and appreciates the greatness of human life. " Because man is in a sense supernatural, he
has a definite part and share in the outside universe, and ... he will never reach his real sphere, until he once more ascends to those godlike slopes from which he has descended, and become, as his divine ancestors once were, a participator in the service and duty of the outside world ... [M]ere physical science does not, and cannot, explain but a small part of the mystery of life here, and . . . when we teach those higher planes of man's personality, his real ego, the true blossom of his existence, then physical science, with all of its great benefits to humanity, is useless in the supreme task of brushing aside the veils of mystery which surround and wrap our outward and inward universe.
Ms. Chapter 20: "Salvation of Man Only Possible Through the Race"
[The whole chapter is quoted.]
Religion has emphasized of late the salvation of the individual soul. But there can be no salvation of the single man if the race is doomed. Man must find himself first in the race, because in this world, it is in the race that he is immortal, and is justified here and before God. The soul of the individual man is so mysteriously and yet so inevitably linked with his race stock that one forever reacts on the other. That he must lose himself in order to find himself is forever true. Individuality is a great fact in life but it is a result, rather than an original cause or an independent factor, and the great individual is he who serves. In truth there is no great individuality which does not serve. It is in truth service which creates great individuality. Individuality is the result of ideal impulse, action of some sort in some direction either for good or evil. Hence the personality of the evil one is void like as it were but the shadow of God, or the vacuity where God is not.
Ms. Chapter 21: "Monarchy and the Over-lords"
Monarchy is "the one ideal form of human government," and democracy is a fleeting revolt against its abuses. Kingship is part of "the great primal plan of human order and destiny." Republics have never lasted, whereas the idea of monarchy has existed from the beginning of human history. Paradoxically, the king represents the deity, and yet he is a prisoner of his office, with almost no human freedom. The ancient overlords, the Prosperos of old, may actually have controlled nature. In any case, the idea of the overlord came from the original divine race.
Ms. Chapter 22: "The Original or Divine Abode of the God-man on this Earth called in the Holy Scriptures the Garden of Eden"
Preface: Vergil, Aeneid, IV, 5 lines
The great races of antiquity were colonies of a greater Empire, Atlantis, the inhabitants of which were a race of Prosperos. The tradition of Atlantis was handed down from the Egyptians through Plato to the modern world, and it also comes down to us from the description of Eden in Genesis. The present Gulf Stream is the remains of the warm current around the island kingdom. Thus the idea of Atlantis agrees with tradition, Scripture, mythology and geology. The Pole or centre of the earth used to be Atlantis, and "when at the fall the catastrophe occurred the planet may have been thrown off its proper angle to its orbit, and so was 'alienated' so to speak, from the universe and God." The history of Atlantis is corroborated by such varied authorities as Sir William Dawson, Sir Daniel Wilson, Fletcher in his Lost Island of Atlantis, Pindar, and Tennyson; by the Arran Islanders, the Cingalese and the Japanese Ainos; and by the Norse Sagas.
Clearly, "The Tragedy of Man" is more poetic than scientific. Campbell begs some of his most important questions, and he treats analogies as if they were empirically-derived facts. Nevertheless, the treatise has a certain inner logic, and inconsistencies could have been resolved, repetitions deleted, and logic strengthened if Campbell had finished revising the work and had then submitted it to a sympathetic editor.
Other writers of similar books did just that. In 1873, Sir Daniel Wilson published his remarkable Caliban: The Missing Link,8 in which he shows that Shakespeare, using his poetic intuition, discovered man's origin centuries before Darwin's science produced The Descent of Man. In The Tempest, a parable of man's development on earth, Caliban represents the highest development of man without the divine infusion of soul, while Prospero represents the highest level true humanity can reach. Because his intuition led him past the height of poetic creation to the discovery of a fundamental truth about man, God and the universe, Shakespeare is the supreme example of earth's supreme race.
Wilson taught English and history at University College, Toronto, but he was also an internationally respected ethnologist and antiquarian, an artist, and a poet of sorts. In 1881, when Wilson became president of University College, Wilfred Campbell was a student there. Twelve years later, in "At the Mermaid Inn," Campbell calls Wilson "too conservative" and "too old ... to come into touch with a growth of science in the last two decades." Wilson is a "classifier and collector of knowledge," but "when it comes to a large sweep of the intellect, unclouded and unbiased for the purpose of free comparison, a broader and more modern type of mind is necessary."9 Campbell did not agree entirely with Wilson's rejection of Darwinism, but he adopted the Caliban-Prospero analogy and the belief that the existence of Shakespeare, the greatest of all human beings, helps to prove the superiority of the British race. More importantly, Campbell accepted Wilson's sense of the unity of knowledge and the corollary ideas that any person of high intellect and aspiration could address any subject, and that the creative imagination could asemble a non-empirical yet valid argument on a scientific subject.
Perhaps the largest contemporary explanation of the universe and man's place in it which relies on other than empirical evidence is John Fiske's Outlines of Cosmic Philosophy, published in 1874.10 In this massive four-volume work, Fiske attempts to refute the popular positivist philosophy of Auguste Comte. In 1885, William Dawson LeSueur attacked Fiske for failing to separate science from theology and for "proving" his theory by means of metaphor and personification.11 "The Tragedy of Man" uses these same kinds of argument for the same purpose, to denounce materialism while accounting for the development of man's essentially spiritual nature. Campbell certainly knew Fiske's Myths and Mythmakers,12 and he may also have known the Outlines of Cosmic Philosophy.
A smaller but more influential work of a similar nature is Dr. Richard Maurice Bucke's Cosmic Consciousness, first published in 1901 and still in print.13 Like "The Tragedy of Man," Cosmic Consciousness tries to explain how evolution has worked, and continues to work, with respect to human nature. Bucke assumes that a tremendous gulf exists between man and the other animals, a gulf defined by man's mental state and not by any of his physical attributes. He postulates that, like the animals, man once had only Simple Consciousness, aware of his environment and able to learn from it but unaware of himself as an individual entity. For some reason, sometime in prehistoric ages, at first a few and finally most humans achieved Self Consciousness, an awareness of the self as separate from others, responsible for its own actions and responsive to its own abstract thoughts. In this state, such qualities as conscience and altruism developed. Again, at certain points in the historical past, a few individuals such as Buddha, Jesus, Mohammed, Dante, Blake and Wait Whitman ascended to Cosmic Consciousness, an awareness of, and a unity with, the cosmos. As the millenia wear on, more and more people evolve into this state, and, as far as human insight can tell, this godlike condition is man's ultimate destiny. The theory of Cosmic Consciousness explains the relationship among the great religions of the world: all rest on the vision of prophets who have reached Cosmic Consciousness and therefore all partake equally, though differently, of the same truth. The theory also resolves the Bacon-Shakespeare controversy: when Bacon achieved Cosmic Consciousness, he became Shakespeare.
To support the conclusions which, taken together, yield the theory of Cosmic Consciousness, Bucke calls upon various kinds of evidence. He began to think about extraordinary mental states in 1872, when he had a mystical illumination. Then, in 1877, after several years' obsession with Leaves of Grass, he met Walt Whitman. The great sympathy that grew up between himself and Whitman strengthened Bucke's sense of a supernormal plane of consciousness, reached by only a few but toward which all of humanity is progressing. As a doctor, he wondered how such states of consciousness could come to exist. In Man's Moral Nature (1870), he had described his explorations of the brain and sympathetic nervous system, and he had used his discoveries to demonstrate that man's moral nature is at least in part biological.14 Cosmic Consciousness builds on this theory. When the nervous system reaches a certain degree of development, the leap from animalistic Simple Consciousness to human Self Consciousness becomes possible. The development of humanity over the aeons is parallel to the development of most human individuals from infancy to adulthood, a duplication which proves the theory. As superintendent of the London (Ontario) Asylum, Dr. Bucke had ample opportunity to collect evidence about the mind. His uniting of scientific and moral doctrines persuaded him that the insane and the retarded -- and perhaps even the criminal -- are fully human, but that they have developed from Self Consciousness to Simple Consciousness. In Cosmic Consciousness, Bucke explains that, like the leap from Simple to Self consciousness, the leap to Cosmic Consciousness occurs in certain individuals when Self Consciousness reaches its highest possible development. Just as he used evidence gathered by observing asylum inmates in Man's Moral Nature, Bucke supports his Cosmic Consciousness theory indictively with case histories of fourteen people who have achieved Cosmic Consciousness and thirty-six "Less, Imperfect, and Doubtful Instances" (pp. XVIII and 211). Analysis and tabulation of these histories show that men are more likely to reach this state than women are, but that to do so a man must have an extraordinarily sensitive mother. Men usually achieve Cosmic Consciousness in middle life, when Self Consciousness has had time to develop fully yet while they still have most of their mature lives available for teaching and inspiring others. This fact, plus the fact that Cosmic Consciousness occurs more often in the recent than in the distant past, prove that man is evolving toward Cosmic Consciousness, for the faculties appearing soonest in the growing child are the most primitive, while those that appear latest are more complex. If a faculty does not appear until middle age, it must be a very recent human acquisition. St. Paul spoke of Cosmic Consciousness as "Christ" and indeed it
shows the cosmos to consist not of dead matter governed by unconscious, rigid, and unintending law; it shows it on the contrary as entirely immaterial, entirely spiritual and entirely alive; it shows that death is an absurdity, that every one and every thing has eternal life; it shows that the universe is God and that God is the universe, and that no evil ever did or ever will enter into it; a great deal of this is, of course, from the point of view of self consciousness, absurd-it is nevertheless undoubtedly true.
(p. 14)
Bucke intended to include in Cosmic Consciousness chapters on hypnotism, miracles, spiritualism and phenomena such as levitation. "Time, and probably the necessary ability, failed him" (p. 304), so he simply states his belief that these phenomena are related and that they are all connected with Cosmic Consciousness. "Have we not in ... spiritualism and telepathy ... the germ or germs of some new faculty or faculties?" Buddha, Jesus and Paul taught that "so-called miraculous powers are closely allied to what is here called Cosmic Consciousness, that they appear in relation with the latter, [and] that they are no more supernatural than it is" (p. 309).
"The Tragedy of Man" agrees with Cosmic Consciousness on some points: that human nature is, or ought to be, progressing to a godlike state; that the human psyche at its highest is linked to the entire universe; that human life does not end with death; that all of the great religions have one source and therefore all are, or were, true; and that psychic phenomena result from human powers which most people are at the moment incapable of using. Obviously, though, the basic premises of the two works are utterly opposed. Bucke says that man has evolved from his animal state to Cosmic Consciousness biologically, and that his spiritual development depends on the physiology of the brain and nervous system. His future godlike state will be the culmination of his evolution. Campbell, at the opposite extreme, says that man's first state was godlike, that he has devolved, but that the divine spark remaining in him will triumph and restore his semi-divine nature if only he makes the proper effort in that direction.
The significant relationship between the two works lies in the reasoning by which the authors' theories are declared proven. Cosmic Consciousness appears to be scientific. It contains four major charts, many arguments based on percentages and comparisons of figures, and plentiful documentation. Of the 318 pages, 230 are devoted to case histories, the inductive proof of the theory. Nevertheless, the figures are inexact, admittedly general, and qualified with phrases such as "correct enough for the present purpose" and "for the sake of conveying a clear idea" (p. 44). Bucke dismisses the argument that the most important cases of Cosmic Consciousness -- Buddha, Jesus, Paul and Mohammed -- occurred in the distant and not the recent past by saying, "And what is reason and so-called common sense worth in such a question as this, anyway?" (p. 57). Further, Bucke supplies an extensive interpretation for each one of the case histories. In short, like Campbell, Bucke constructs his proofs by mingling the subjective and the objective, the intuitional and the empirical, the inductive and the deductive, without separation or preference.
A similar spirit is behind William Lyon Mackenzie King's Industry and Humanity.15 Under the auspices of the Rockefeller Foundation, which he helped to found in 1914, King wrote Industry and Humanity as a manual for a new order of labor relations. This order was to be grounded in Faith, not Fear, a formula which King ascribes to Pasteur, but which Bucke also recommends in Man's Moral Nature. King assumes the idea of human progress, so that for him "evolution" means much the same thing as "history." The goal of evolution is the Perfect Man, not the Perfect Brute, for man's nature and his evolution are spiritual, even though he has allowed himself to be overcome by materialism (p. 113). Now, says King, "Realizing that the materialistic interpretation of the universe has brought death and confusion, we have ample scientific grounds for beginning anew with the only possible alternative, and attempting a solution of our international and industrial problems in accordance with a spiritual interpretation of life" (p. 117). Highly evolved Faith will rule, not primordial Fear. The law of the survival of the fittest refers neither to conduct nor to morality. When applied to man, it describes the human struggle against the physical environment, and therefore it fosters cooperation against the common enemy, not social and industrial rivalry. The Law of Christian Service, not the Law of the Survival of the Fittest, must govern human relations because it alone is appropriate to human beings and society. Cooperation "renders the biological analogy inapplicable to the condition of human progress" (p. 126).
On this theory King bases the recommendations for peaceful and mutually satisfactory labor relations which occupy most of Industry and Humanity. He supports the theory with two kinds of evidence, both of which seemed to him to be scientific. In spite of his disclaimers, the book is filled with examples drawn from his personal experience as a mediator, both in Canada for the Department of Labour and in the United States as an emissary of John D. Rockefeller, Jr. In these instances, techniques of mediation based on the theory apparently worked, thus proving the theory. The question is begged, because King himself was the only experimenter, and he operated throughout on foregone conclusions, not on hypotheses, as his own narrative and his diary entries for the period clearly show.16 Secondly, like Cosmic Consciousness, Industry and Humanity contains charts as proofs. Just as Bucke uses approximate, subjectively-skewed figures in his tables, King uses the various relationships he sees among segments of the labor/management/ownership population. With these he constructs foldout pages of dazzling complex circular drawings in which psychological, social, financial, political and spiritual relationships interconnect with philosophical, religious and practical theories, recommendations and events. These drawings resemble comprehensive astrological charts more than reductive diagrams.
The reason for this complexity is that King wrote Industry and Humanity not merely to help ease North American labor difficulties, but to reform the world. His diary entry for March 3, 1915, records that in Industry and Humanity he is
working up the spiritual interpretation of the universe as against the material. I am sure that in a failure to recognize this lies the fundamental cause of error in much of the effort at social reform and that it is also at the bottom of conflict ... If I can make this clear, and broadly reveal the practical application of Christian principles to industry I will have helped to make a real contribution. I think I have worked out in a logical way how it has come about that the materialistic philosophy has taken such a hold. It is a part I must develop for it is the important thing today.
T 37, p. 2687)
Industry and Humanity is essentially a philosophical book. King wrote it to spread the idea that, because man is primarily a spiritual creature, the official rules governing human relations must be based on a spiritual and not a materialistic view of life, a premise shared by "The Tragedy of Man." Like Campbell, King was imbued with a sense of mission; far more successfully than Campbell, he strove to convert the world to his form of idealism, and Industry and Humanity was his first treatise. Both works, like Cosmic Consciousness, rely on an internal logic supported by facts of various kinds selected because they support the theory, not because the theory is derived from them.
A similar pattern of reasoning characterizes William Douw Lighthall's book The Person of Evolution (1930).17 Like "The tragedy of Man," The Person of Evolution represents the labor and the developing thought of many years. Even in 1930, after some 45 years of work, Lighthall was not satisfied that his argument was finished: the 1933 edition contains three appendices, the first added "since going to press" in 1930, the second added in March, 1931, and the third appended in January, 1933. As early as 1884, the fact of altruism had stimulated him to speculate about evolution, for if man is simply a higher ape, how can altruism be explained?18 Like King, Lighthall concluded that selfless cooperation is man's distinguishing feature. Finally, in The Person of Evolution, he argues that man is no longer progressing physically, but that he is moving toward a higher form of consciousness which reason alone, even in its most highly developed form, can only begin to comprehend. Reason shows us the importance of feeling, and feeling enables us to recognize our kinship with one another and with the cosmos. Lighthall calls this overarching unity the Outer Consciousness, the Superperson, or the Person of Evolution. Every human being is part of it, and it is the source of the Will or intention behind all life. Because of this unity of the individual with the cosmic personality, pain and death are unimportant and illusory.
The Person of Evolution is constructed like a philosophical treatise. Every paragraph is numbered, and possible objections, opposing theories and inductive and deductive supporting evidence are dealt with in a traditional form. Like Campbell and Bucke, however, Lighthall draws evidence from any source that comes to mind, using the newly-discovered existence of viruses, for example, to support his literary, philosophical and theological opinions. To justify this technique, he also argues for the unity of knowledge. All human puzzles, he says, "have a common foundation. They are based on a real connection of the human individual consciousness with a larger consciousness' (p. 12); therefore, he believes, no field of knowledge can be isolated from any other field. Near the end of his book, he articulates this theory of knowledge and describes the direction in which it should lead the investigators whose work will be most important to mankind. Primary science, the discovery of facts, he says, is the work of specialists, and no one can be a specialist in more than one scientific field. From the papers written by these specialists, "acute generalizers" prepare resumés for "such columns as Science-Progress, Nature, Psyche, Science, Scientia, and in the high-class weeklies and magazines." From these sources, other writers make up collections, "including the most recent encyclopedias and general textbooks." On these sources the philosopher bases his work.
It is at this stage of authoritative preparation and digestion that the task of philosophers, great and small begins. Their task must be to each make what unity he can of the various forms of the collected knowledge. Such a one ought to try to acquire some share,--it will be very limited,--of the original material and methods of each of the sciences which has a bearing on his chosen line of the synthesis, and enough of the terminology to enable him to read the original papers when necessary; but he should eschew the attempt to encumber his memory with needles nomenclature and small detail. He may aim rather to attentively scrutinize the resumès, particularly those which affect his own questions, and to bring an independent judgement to bear on their solution. Following this course with each science involved, he will seek for cross-questions of interest, and apply general laws of logic. Finally come the philosophies to be read and pondered. These processes constitute the method I have attempted to apply. As regards the searches for traces and inferences of consciousness through evolutionary fields I have tried to follow an adaptation of the maximum Nihil humani a me alienurn puto.
(pp. 203-04)
Bucke, King and Campbell would also subscribe to that motto. All belonged to Section 11 of the Royal Society of Canada, and the Proceedings of that body document the wide span of knowledge shared at the meetings in those early years. The other three agreed with Lighthall's theory of knowledge, too, and the consequent duty of thinkers to gather and correlate all kinds of thought into a single systematic philosophy. None of these four writers was a professional philosopher. Bucke was a physician, the superintendent of the London, Ontario, Lunatic Asylum. The success of his humane treatment of the insame and the retarded caused a revolution in the medical world, winning him international fame. He also won an international reputation as the great friend and biographer of Walt Whitman. Bucke was a founding fellow of the Royal Society, and, four years after his death, at the 1906 annual meeting, James H. Coyne read a long paper on his life and work. In this paper, Man's Moral Nature and especially Cosmic Consciousness received more attention than any of Bucke's other achievements, and at least equal praise.19 William Duow Lighthall was a lawyer, a businessman, a literary critic, a poet and an anthologist, but, according to Armour and Trott, he "frequented philosophy conferences and is reputed to have corresponded with a good many 'professionals' " (p. 361). Like Bucke, he considered his lay status the ideal for the thinkers who would shape the modern world. King was an administrator and a politician. Pursuing with single-minded zeal his mission to lead his fellow men to an ideal state of earthly government, he constructed a sturdy philosophy of Christian idealism as underpinning. Wilfred Campbell shared this sense of mission to inspire and redeem society with his philosophy but he toiled for 26 years as a government clerk. None of these men felt diffident about his ability to develop and publicize his philosophical interpretations of evolutionary science.
Bucke, Lighthall and King were all connected in some way with Wilfred Campbell. Campbell knew of Bucke's work, and he had the opportunity to know Bucke himself. He was elected to the Royal Society in 1894, by which time Bucke seems no longer to have been an active member. Nevertheless, Campbell was president of Section 11 when Bucke died, and Bucke's name is carried on the list of deceased members in that year. In 1906, when the paper on Bucke was read by the newly-elected Coyne, Campbell sponsored it. If Campbell did not know Bucke personally, he learned of his work in 1906 at the latest, and he mentions Cosmic Consciousness in his 1910 diary.20 Wilfred Campbell and William Duow Lighthall were old friends. The record of their congenial acquaintance begins in 1888, when Lighthall was preparing Songs of the Great Dominion and Campbell was about to publish Lake Lyrics, and it continues at least through 1914 .21 Lighthall was elected to Section 11 of the Royal Society when Campbell was its president, and he was present to hear Coyne's tribute to Bucke in 1906. In his own Royal Society tribute to Campbell in 1918, Lighthall praised his friend for his "many interesting theories,"22 a suggestion that the two men had discussed the topic most pressing to both, human evolution.
Campbell's association with William Lyon Mackenzie King was much closer than his relationship even with Lighthall. They met no later than 1902, when "Henry A. Harper," Campbell's elegy on the heroic death of King's roommate, struck such sympathetic chords in King that he paid a printer $5 to have the poem published as a pamphlet (T 18, p. 1733). Campbell cooperated sufficiently with King in having a monument erected to Harper that he was among the dignitaries at its dedication in 1906, and he renamed his elegy "A Canadian Galahad," after the statue. King's meticulous diaries document their growing friendship, their frequent long walks and talks, and King's admiration for Campbell's poems and his affection for the poet. Campbell's diary, kept only during 1910, mentions King regularly. Their friendship was at its height between 1907 and 1915, when they were neighbors. During this period, Campbell probably wrote most of "The Tragedy of Man," and King became deeply immersed in Industry and Humanity. In 1950, Margaret Coulby said that King, whom she knew, claimed to be "Campbell's closest friend during the last 20 years of the poet's life."23 H. Reginald Hardy, who wrote an authorized biography of King in 1949, says that King "had a good deal of the poet in him" and admired the ability
to make a song out of simple words, to find beauty and music in the most unexpected places.
"The wild witchery of the winter woods!" once mused Campbell in King's presence, as he poured a bucket of slop into the feed-trough for his pigs.
King was amazed that anyone could wax lyrical while engaged in such a mundane task.24
Hardy might have added that King's fondness for the poet sprang from his very ability to identify and praise the spiritual qualities which alone could give value to the material world. Both men believed that faith in God and the divine spark in man was "the great essential to progressive work" (T 20, p. 1944), and that they were called to a life of service to the human race. Like Campbell, King examined every task to ensure that it was worthy of his mission, but, unlike his friend, King pruned his life of everyone and everything that did not contribute to that mission. King gave his testimonials to his friendship with Campbell 25 years after Campbell's death. Whether or not they describe events accurately, they convey King's lasting sense of intimacy with Campbell, his impression of having been influenced by him, and his wish to be connected publicly with the poet and his ideals.
Wilfred Campbell was impelled to write "The Tragedy of Man" by the same spirit that moved Bucke, Lighthall and King. Cosmic Consciousness, Industry and Humanity, The Person of Evolution, and "The Tragedy of Man" are similar in subject and idealistic outlook, but more significantly, they are based on the assumption that an intelligent, thinking person could--even should--devise an explanation of the universe which would take all scientific, social, literary, philosophical and theological factors into consideration. Their assumption was validated by the tradition set by authors such as Daniel Wilson and John Fiske, and, in the cases of Bucke, King and Lighthall, by the willingness of publishers to produce and the public to buy their works. Because "The Tragedy of Man" is unedited and even in many places uncorrected, it will probably never be published. Even so, it is crucial to a full understanding of Wilfred Campbell. It is the key to the ideas in all of his prose and poetry, and it demonstrates that a comprehensive philosophy lies behind his writing, his politics and the pattern of his life.
Today, neither a scientist nor a philosopher would espouse the method of thinking used by Campbell and his colleagues. In 1881, William Dawson LeSueur expressed the fear that " 'Evolution' is going to be made a summary, and rather unreasoning, arbiter in all controversies with which it can claim to have anything to do. . . . The disposition to force an investigator to face [Darwin's theory of man's origin] whether he needs to do so or not, points to a kind of metaphysical absolutism."25 Therefore, LeSueur argued, Darwinism and all other theories dealing with the physical world should stay in their own sphere, and theology, philosophy, literature and any other studies of man's mental or spiritual nature should remain in their own non-material area. After the Great War, this dualism became the usual basis of modern thought, eclipsing the idealistic system-building of the thinkers discussed here. Increasingly narrow professionalism and the confinement of both science and philosophy to the universities has effectively stopped lay involvement in either discipline. The fields of investigation dealing with the spirit and those dealing with the material world are now firmly separated. But it is important to remember that this was not the case three quarters of a century ago, when Bucke, King, Lighthall and Campbell wrote their treatises.
"The Tragedy of Man" is not an aberration. Wilfred Campbell needs to be placed historically among a group of thinkers whose methods and solutions have not survived the cataclysm of the World Wars and the explosive development of the sciences in the second, third and fourth quarters of this century. "The Tragedy of Man" remains an essential document for the study of Wilfred Campbell's work and a valuable relic of our intellectual history.
NOTES
1 Leslie Armour and Elizabeth Trott, The Faces of Reason: An Essay on Philosophy and Culture in English Canada 1850-1950 (Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 1981), pp. 12-13. See also Hans Eichner, "The Rise of Modern Science and the Genesis of Romanticism," PMLA (Jan., 1982), pp. 8-30; Arnold Haultain, "A Search for an Ideal," Canadian Magazine (Mar., 1904), p. 427, and "The Search for the Ultimate," University Magazine (Dec., 1908, p. 580; William Dawson LeSueur, "Evolution and the Destiny of Man," Popular Science Monthly (Feb., 1885), p. 456, and "Progress and Poverty, and the Doctrine of Evolution," Rose-Belford's Canadian Monthly and National Review (Mar., 1881), p. 287; Andrew Macphail, "A History of the Idea of Evolution," Dalhousie Review, 5:1 (1925-26), p. 22; A.B. McKillop, A Critical Spirit: The Thought of William Dawson LeSueur (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1977), and A Disciplined Intelligence: Critical Inquiry and Canadian Thought in the Victorian Era (Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1979); Samuel E.D. Shortt, The Search for an Ideal: Six Canadian Intellectuals and their Convictions in an Age of Transition, 1890-1930 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1976); Robert J. Taylor, "The Darwinian Revolution: The Responses of Four Canadian Scholars" (PhD Diss: McMaster, 1976); John Watson, "Darwinism and Morality," Canadian Monthly (Oct., 1876), p. 319; J.A. Allen, "The Evolution of Morality: A Reply," Canadian Monthly (May, 1877), p. 490; John Watson, "The Ethical Aspects of Darwinism: A Rejoinder," Canadian Monthly (June, 1877), p. 638.
2 LP 20/VI Prose. 76 "The Tragedy of Man." The first title of this treatise was "The Divine Origin of Man." In subsequent notes, "LP" designates material in the Lome Pierce Collection, Queen's University Archives. Quotations retain the original spelling and punctuation.
3 LP 16/VI Prose. Addresses and Articles [9]-[12]. [12] "Darwinism and the Destiny of Man." This folder contains a manuscript preface; a clipping titled "Poet Believes in Dual Origin" from the Ottawa Free Press, dated Thursday, March 26, 1908; and a printed card showing the 1907-08 Ottawa Literary and Scientific Society program of lectures. Since the Society disbanded after that season, the 1907-08 transactions were not printed.
4 William Wilfred Campbell, Poetical Tragedies (Toronto: Briggs, 1908), p. 11.
5 LP 11/111 Diary 1910-1916. (This diary actually contains regular entries for 1910 only, along with a few notes for 1911 and jottings for household accounts until 1916.)
6 William Wilfred Campbell, The Scotsman in Canada, Vol. I (Toronto: Musson, 1911), p. 43.
7 References for the poems in this article will be to the two editions of Campbell's poems most likely to be found in libraries: The Collected Poems of Wilfred Campbell (Toronto: Briggs; Toronto: Ryerson; New York and London: Revell, 1905) [CP]; and The Poetical Works of Wilfred Campbell, ed. W.J. Sykes (London: Hodder and Stoughton; Toronto: Ryerson, 1923) [PW]. For poems in neither of these books, references will be to "The Collected Poems of William Wilfred Campbell," ed. Laurel Boone (PhD Diss.: University of New Brunswick, 1981) [B]. These references will be included in the text. "The Tragedy of Man," PW 280.
8 Daniel Wilson, Caliban: The Missing Link (London: MacMillan, 1873).
9 At the Mermaid Inn, e. Barrie Davies (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1979), pp. 236-37.
10 John Fiske, Outlines of Cosmic Philosophy: Based on the Doctrine of Evolution, with Criticisms on the Positive Philosophy, intro. Josiah Royce (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1902).
11 LeSueur, "Evolution and the Destiny of Man."
12 John Fiske, Myths and Mythmakers: Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology (Boston: Osgood, 1872; rpt. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1902). See also At the Mermaid Inn, p. 25.
13 Richard Maurice Bucke, Cosmic Consciousness: A Study in the Evolution of the Human Mind (Philadelphia: Innes, 1901; rpt. New York: Dutton, 1969). References will be to the 1901 edition and will be included in the text.
14 Richard Maurice Bucke, Man's Moral Nature (New York: Putnam, 1879). This book is discussed by Armour and Trott, pp. 364-74.
15 William Lyon Mackenzie King, Industry and Humanity (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1918). References will be included in the text.
16 William Lyon Mackenzie King, The Mackenzie King Diaries, 1893-1931 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1973). Microfiche, transcripts 16-39, 1900-1918. Further references will be to transcript [T] and page numbers, and will be included in the text.
17 William Douw Lighthall, The Person of Evolution, definitive ed. (Toronto: MacMillan, 1933). Further references will be included in the text.
18 Armour and Trott, p. 380.
19 James H. Coyne, "Richard Maurice Bucke-A Sketch," Proceedings and Transactions of the Royal Society of Canada, 1906 (Ottawa: Hope, 1906), sec. 11, p. 159.
20 LP 11/111 Diary 1910-1916. Entry for March 2, 1910.
21 LP 9/11 Letters. Vol. I; LP 10/II Letters. Vol. 2 (Lighthall's letters to Campbell); McGill University Library, Rare Books Div. CM 1 Box (III, 15b) (Campbell's letters to Lighthall).
22 William Duow Lighthall, "William Wilfred Campbell," Proceedings and Transactions of the Royal Society of Canada, 1918 (Ottawa: Hope, 1918), p. vi.
23 Margaret Coulby, "Poet of the Mist: A Critical Estimation of the Position of William Wilfred Campbell in Canadian Literature" (MA Thesis: Ottawa University, 1950), p. 1.
24 H. Reginald Hardy, Mackenzie King of Canada (London: Oxford University Press, 1949), p. 33.
25 LeSueur, "Progress and Poverty," p. 292.