Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors

Now it’s Hookers turn (Henry Fonda). Sincerely, “I knew this theory fifteen years ago. I was then entirely opposed to it; I argued against it again and again; but since then I have devoted myself unremittingly to natural history; in its pursuit I have traveled around the world. Facts in this science which before were inexplicable to me became one by one explained by this theory, and conviction has been thus gradually forced upon an unwilling convert.”

The camera pulls out of the great hall. Dissolve to a close-up of a finch perched on the branch of a tree. A bearded man (Ronald Colman), kindly, dressed in rural gentleman’s hat and cape, but with a muffler despite the June weather, is staring lovingly up at the bird. He hardly seems to hear the voice of his wife (Billie Burke), high-pitched, affectionate, calling from the great house, off-camera: “Charles … CHARLES … Trevor is here with news from that meeting at Oxford.” He casts one appreciative look back at the finch before finally walking off to the house …²⁸

* “[G]irls have been educated either to be drudges or toys, beneath men; or a sort of angels above him The possibility that women are meant to be men’s comrades, their fellows, and their equals, so far as Nature puts no bar on that equality, does not seem to have entered into the minds of those who have had the conduct of the education of girls.” The first step to a better world, he said, was “Emancipate girls” Their hair “will not curl less gracefully outside the head by reason of there being brains within”²⁹

Chapter 5

LIFE IS JUST A THREE-LETTER WORD

Who first drives life to begin its journey?

The Kena Upanishad

(8th to 7th centuries B.C., India)¹

Who’s aware of mutability?

Not even Buddhas.

DAITETSU

(1333–1408, Japan)²

In a shaft of sunlight, even when the air is still, you can sometimes see a tribe of dust motes dancing. They move in zigzag paths as if animated, motivated, propelled by some small but earnest purpose. Some of the followers of Pythagoras, the ancient Greek philosopher, thought that each mote had its own immaterial soul that told it what to do, just as they thought that each human has a soul that gives us direction and tells us what to do. Indeed, the Latin word for soul is anima—it is something similar in many modern languages—from which come such English words as “animate” and “animal.”

In fact, those motes of dust make no decisions, have no volition. They are instead the passive agents of invisible forces. They’re so tiny that they’re battered about by the random motion of molecules of air, which have a slight preponderance of collisions first on one side of the mote and then on the other, propelling them, with what looks to us as some mix of intention and indecision, through the air. Heavier objects—threads, say, or feathers—cannot much be jostled by molecular collisions; if not wafted by a current of air, they simply fall.

The Pythagoreans deceived themselves. They did not understand how matter works on the level of the very small, and so—from a specious and oversimple argument—they deduced a ghostly spirit that pulls the strings. When we look around us at the living world, we see a profusion of plants and animals, all seemingly designed for specific ends and single-mindedly devoted to their own and their offspring’s survival—intricate adaptations, an exquisite match of form to function. It is natural to assume that some immaterial force, something like the soul of a dust mote, but far grander, is responsible for the beauty, elegance, and variety of life on Earth, and that each organism is propelled by its own, appropriately configured, spirit. Many cultures all over the world have drawn just such a conclusion. But might we here, as did the ancient Pythagoreans, be overlooking what actually goes on in the world of the very small?