The Perceptual Basis of Liberty; H. Elsom

THE PERCEPTUAL BASIS OF LIBERTY tg JJarotJB. G~om ~ ALL MEN desire to be free. It would be a mistake to sup pose that the leftist loves freedom less than the conserva tive. Some men's struggle for freedom, however, causes suffering and death while yet others come among their brothers as a healing balm. Why such opposite effects from the identical basic urge? Freedom, in human terms, has to do with two attri butes: the capacity for choice and a newer attribute but recently arrived in the human gene, the moral faculty. It is the latter which is determinative of the character of our activity. On this sense hangs the survival of the species. If morals are conceived of as conduct born of reason and training, they may be oriented at call both to the demands of a technologically organized society or to a given political structure. Custom and tradition may be made to order; morality will then be displayed as a rela tive thing, adjustable to varying specific demands ac cording to the ascendant political influences of the day. Appropriate morality for the common citizen be comes but a matter of education and training of the Mr. Elsom, an investment officer of a bank, finds time for freelance exploration and explanation of the libertarian point of view.

260 THE PERCEPTUAL BASIS OF LIBERTY 261 young, with amendments of their ethical equipment to be supplied as necessary during later life by means of com munication and entertainment media. Somehow though, this approach always brings wholesale death, imprison ment, and misery, for it involves an act of credulity diffi cult of achievement for the thoughtful individual against whom, in the end, force must be directed. He cannot go contrary to his own senses; he cannot repose confidence in the expertness and motivations of men in violation of his observation and experience. Religionists have seldom asked of him so great an act of faith. If, on the other hand, morality is a life-growth, if it has had an orderly biological development, then the forego ing would be reversed: we would conform to its nature or sicken, just as our lives must accord with our anatomi;. cal structure. The formulation of ethics to support intel lectually derived aims would be absurd.

Emergent Morality There are clues which point to such a background; i.e., that the moral faculty rises naturally out of the processes of life. As a beginning, it is clear that the amoeba, a single celled creature, would be little perturbed by the state of right or wrong in its puddle. With many individ ual humans, moral acuity has attained high degree. Physi cal complexity, then, is a condition precedent to the per ception of moral phenomena. If this were all, one could attribute the moral sense to the brain and nervous sys tem. It would also put us back where we began-the er262 HAROLD B. ELSOM roneous concept that man's proper conduct can be purely a product of reason. Also, we are told that man has not changed noticeably in brain or other physical characteris tics in thousands of years, yet his ways and mores have de veloped greatly. A human being, however, is an organic whole. The brain is not insulated from the rest of his being. What happens in the liver affects the little toe; the function of the kidney has to do with heart and lungs. All exists in an organic medium, a physicochemical balance of blood, fluids, plasma, and lymph flowing through re gional systems, organs and glands interchanging sub stances, regulating, accepting, rejecting. The organs have knowledge apart from the brain. If one kidney is re moved, the other knows it and enlarges. In certain· kinds of heart damage, repairs and growth offset the injury.

Cicatrization is a cooperative effort of blood, corpuscle, and tissue. 't\Tithin the parts there is a sensing of things to come. Certain cells in the embryo aggregate to form a spleen. The brain projects a portion of itself, takes on a covering of skin which becomes transparent, then changes into lens, cornea, and proceeds to constitute a complete opti cal system for use after birth. Our examples can be multi plied endlessly. Such a range of complexity conditioned the advent of moral awareness, such complexity and something more; for not all men exhibit response to moral stimuli. As we have shown, purpose and knowledge exist in the organs and the fluids, though not in terms understood by us.

THE PERCEPTUAL BASIS OF LIBERTY 263 They abide far below the turbulent surface of conscious ness. At these depths are systems of tension and energies, both physical and psychic. Modification of this inner bal ance by God or by Nature or by man, himself, through his will, can change what man is and what he may be come. Differentiation of a portion of the species could well go unnoticed because no change of form or feature is necessary. Evolution would be subtle-slight variations of brain, nerve, or organic balance, hidden glandular in fluences, and so forth. Moral man and his predecessor can exist side by side, presenting to the world seemingly iden tical anatomy and outward appearance. Are there clues to suggest that such developments have, in fact, occurred? We think there are. Not laboratory proof, of course. One cannot compare the nervous structure of a citizen of Jericho ten thousand years ago with that of a New Yorker of 1963. Nonetheless, there are suggestive facts which may be displayed. To do so, we select but one thread from an immense skein. That one thread, we cut short.

Twelve Million Years Ago Since the moral sense began with man, it is appropri ate that we tie one end of our thread to amoral subman. Some anthropologists are willing to fix our origins in the Miocene period, twelve million years ago. Let us secure the knot then to Proconsul, an orthograde primate found in Miocene deposits in Lake Victoria, East Africa. Cer tainly not human, still he possessed brain, teeth, and 264 HAROLD B. ELSOM body suggestive of human characteristics to come. Later non-man discoveries, A ustralopithecus africanus J Plesian thropus J and Paranthropus exhibited some of the mor phology of man. They walked with his stance. The use of fire and clubs appear to be associated with these crea tures. These finds are identified with the later Pleistocene period. Next comes a truly debatable specimen, Pithecanthro pus erectus J found on the island of Java in 1891. Man like ape or ape-like man, we know not. Dr. Eugene Du bois, the discoverer, denominated it a superior ape. Iden tical features led Sir Arthur Keith, a British authority, to the conviction that Pithecanthropus was human.

Without exactitude as to sequence, it seems conclusive that the threshold of humanity was crossed by Sinanthro pus pekinensis and Homo Neanderthalensis. This would have been in the late Pliocene or early Pleistocene period, say, one million years ago. With Sinanthropoid skeletons have been found quartz tools, fire hearths, and the re mains of Pleistocene animals. He killed game, dragged it to his cave, and cooked it. Neanderthals were very nu merous, finds having turned up at various locations in Europe, Russia, and Middle Asia. Skeletons are fre quently accompanied by flint tools. In some instances, they buried their dead. The cranial capacity was above the 1,350 cubic centimeters normal to modern man, but their skulls were low-crested and marked by supraorbital ridges. They had receding chins and forward hafted necks. These features give them palaeoanthropic or prim itive classification.

THE PERCEPTUAL BASIS OF LIBERTY 265 Anthropologists give little explanation as to why prim itive humans ceased to be or how or why neanthropic or modern man came upon the scene. He appeared sud denly. Cro-Magnon and neanthropic forms may have lived contemporaneously with palaeoanthropic versions. This fact provides clues to the moral state of both. Many Sinanthropoid skulls have the base broken out. Nean derthal bones show knife knicks and scrape marks where the flesh had been removed. Many of the bones had been cracked and the marrow extracted. Artificial enlarge ments of the foramen magnum indicate removal of the brain. It is quite possible that some other form of hu man, perhaps modern man, was systematically preying on these primitive individuals to the point of their extinc tion. Perhaps cannibalism was widespread. At any rate, only modern man remains and as he enters upon the stage, he is a killer; he is still burdened with bestial moti vation, undiluted by moral stimulus.

How long ago was this? A London dentist, Dr. Alvan T. Marston, digging in the gravels of Swanscombe, Kent, England, in 1935 un earthed a modern human skull. Fluorine tests showed it to be about 500,000 years old. The First Faint Sign Here let us postulate something from our fancy-yet not altogether fanciful for probability forms our base. At some point in the past-no record can tell us where or when-one man, having grown from one unique egg cell, 266 HAROLD B. ELSOM possessed for the first time in the experience of life on earth, a new faculty. It was like the rudimentary eye that cannot distinguish objects because its cells have attained only light sensitivity, not focus. Just so, the new faculty received intimations of the objects with which it was to deal, intimations so formless, so lacking in definition, that its possessor could not realize that he experienced anything at all. Yet so disturbing was it that it gave un certainty to his cudgel, upraised above his guiltless brother.

Whether the club fell is immaterial now. What is im portant is that the wielder of the club begat offspring. Some of these, during other sequences of pillage and despoilment, felt the same disquiet. It had entered the blood of the species to scatter mutants through the cen turies. At last it began to leave scratchings and wedge marks on stone and clay. With the unfolding of time, some of its inheritors could descry glimmerings of its form and meaning. Archeologists exhibit to us an oblong of light brown clay, dried by a sun that shone upon the land of Dr four thousand years ago. Scarce four inches wide, less than eight inches long, its face is about that of a common brick. It is crowded with half-obliterated characters that comprise one of the oldest records of a legal code, that of one Dr-Nammu, deputized king of Dr by Nanna, its moon-god. They show us also a stele of dark greenstone that stands as tall as the ceiling of a modern home in sub urbia. I t was found near Susa on the Persian Gulf in THE PERCEPTUAL BASIS OF LIBERTY 267 1901. Its inscriptions make up a preamble, a set of laws, and an epilogue. It is the imposed code of a conqueror, Hammurabi of Babylon, who declared that he received it of the god, Sham ash, 3,700-3,800 years ago. Enlightened beyond its time, it remained a product of conquest and self-glorification. Full weight was given to vengeance.

There was no hesitancy in fixing commercial relation ships, prices, and wages. These writings are physical evidence of growth of the moral faculty. The idea of the benefaction of mankind was present. So was the idea that business dealings should be honest and that mere weakness did not justify pillage. True, all authority was founded on amoral con quest. True, the ego of the ruler was the consideration above all others. True, superstition, slavery, infanticide, and other forms of murder were sanctioned. Withal, these codes were the work of moral vision that could seek order and justice within a complex of human rights and obligations. They were light years above the bestial ity of Neanderthal and early neanthropic man. From the Land of Canaan We fix our attention now upon the land of Canaan, otherwise Phoenicia. In the littoral at the eastern end of the Mediterranean, at Ras Shamra, two hundred miles or so north of Jerusalem, explorations in 1928-1929 re vealed the ancient city, Ugarit. Writings discovered here point to a paradox in the growth of human morals.

These texts date from the latter half of the second mil268 HAROLD B. ELSOM lennium, B. c. Various languages were employed includ ing Sumerian, Babylonian, Hittite, Egyptian, and Phoe nician or Canaanite. This variety of tongues coupled with a broad range of art objects from Babylon, Mycenae, Egypt, and other far-flung cultures points to cosmopoli tan sophistication in matters of commerce, art, and mor als. Thus, the Canaanites were not a backward people. Archaic Hebrew and Phoenician or Canaanite were one language. Their religious stem was the same. Ca naanite writings lead directly to portions of the Bible. Daniel appears first in Canaanite literature. So do Adam and Eve. "EI" or "Elohim" as a designation of God was common to both languages. Both partook of the same cul tural tradition, were subject to the same conquests, stood in the same line of moral development. Before Moses, the codes of Lipit-Ishtar, lJr-Nammu, and Hammurabi had placed limitations on :murder, stealing, lying, and other infractions. Sections of the Hammurabic code were carried over into the Old rrestament, parts of Exodus, Deuteronomy, and Leviticus being seeming transplants of language and substance.

Abram, or Abraham, of (~enesis was much among the Canaani tes and· scarcely superior to them. He could per mi t his wife to suffer the desire of another man as a measure of his own self-preservation. The slaughter of entire peoples did not offend his senses. These thoughts and acts agreed well with the mores of the times in the land of Canaan. Who then could distinguish Hebrew and Canaanite? How were the Chosen Ones different?

THE PERCEPTUAL BASIS OF LIBERTY 269 Yet as we turn the opening pages of the Old Testa men t, Israel and Canaan are enemies. There is revulsion against ancient familiar idols. Rituals encrusted with cen turies of tradition are now called perverted. Israel sepa rates herself from her heritage. But not all Hebrews. Their bulk remained as it was. They became homesick for idolatry. When Moses left them for but forty days, they made themselves a golden calf, worshipped and sacrificed to it, and "rose up to play." With Moses, Joshua, and Aaron dead, the people reverted to the worship of Baal and Ashtaroth. They wearied of theocracy and asked Samuel to depose God; their preference was to have a human king as did other nations. Was it political factors then that worked the cleavage? No, these were transient things of alignment and re alignment, a continuing flow of advantage and disad vantage.

No, Israel became different in kind from her neigh bors. The cultural stem remained, but there was a sud den increase, biologically speaking, in the vigor and acuity of the moral vision of a small group of men-the patriarchs and the prophets. The leathery old tribesmen became the new awareness and the conscience of the peo ple. Their peculiarity affected the Semitic stem pro foundly. God Above Man The thing that they saw most clearly was that man was less than he had thought himself to be. The laws of 270 HAROLD B. ELSOM Mesopotamia, Babylon, and Sumeria were kingly imposi tions based upon conquest. Recitations anent the deities of their varied pantheon served the glorification of the ruler, added the force of superstition to that of edict. Other kings could utilize other gods or manufacture new ones. The Hebrew patriarch saw the falsity of this. God was not servant to human policy. He was not concocted out of expediency. The injunction was, "Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain," and "Thou shalt have no other gods before me."

Moreover, they could see that the thread of life con nected man with God. This being true, one's ancestors were custodians of the vision and bearers of the seed. The generations were a sequence of flesh and spirit, each the fruit of those long since transformed to dust. The genera tion which honored not gifts received or which despoiled posterity of its birthright would be aborted. The species must cling to the thread of creativity in order to endure (Honor thy father and mother; that thy days may be long upon the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee). They despised the predatory heart. The fixing of atten tion upon inevitable inequalities of person and posses sion was defined as covetousness and proscribed. A people could be secure only as its members were secure. What extraordinary fortune or skill could gain in righteousness, affection, office, or goods was, in the long run, to the bet terment of the whole. Greed and envy could only jeop ardize the entire body of society. The commandment was clear: "Thou shalt not covet."

That the prophets considered their gifts as unique THE PERCEPTUAL BASIS OF LIBERTY 271 was inherent in their conviction that they had been chosen by a single, everlasting God. It is also clear that they held a narrower, more literal view of their invigor ated sense as well. They adduced their knowledge as something they had seen or heard, since they knew no novel means of perception. Listen to Proverbs XXIX, 18, "Where there is no vision, the people perish." Or Ha bakkuk II, 2, "Write the vision and make it plain upon tables, that he may run that readeth it." Or Jeremiah VI, 16, "Stand ye in the ways and see.... " They were talk ing about actual sense perceptions. l'hey were not reasoners as the Greeks were. They did not attempt to define their knowledge nor fathom its dis tant implications. Others were to accept their vision with out question-it was the will of God. It was enough that they could fix the errant one with glittering eye and drive him with lashing tongue.

Neither did their heightened special sense work much change in men themselves. The Jew remained as super stitious as his neighbors. He was as brutally possessive of wife and child. Cruelty was common. Moses could in struct the Levites, "Go in and out from gate to gate throughout the camp, and slay every man his brother, and every man his companion, and every man his neigh bor." More routine punishments for violations of the Law included stoning, execution by fire, and garroting. The tribes were still narrow, bigoted, savage. Hebrew thought was feculent with error. Hardness of heart was ingrained and unchallenged. One must remember, how ever, that the biological requirement at this point in his272 HAROLD B. ELSOM tory was simply that the moral attribute be viable, tough enough to live in a savage environment. It was none too soon. Already the beginnings of mathe matics and physics had taken place with the Egyptians, Greeks, and earlier peoples. The surveyor's stakes mark ing the road to E == mc2 were in place. Its destination was inevitable--:-the extinction of man. Except for one factor. The teleology of life had functioned thousands of years earlier with the injection of moral unrest into that unknown primitive progenitor. Now it was evolved into the Law and the Prophets.

The Law and the Prophets were not enough. They were inadequate to the necessities of the world that was developing. They were inadequate because their application was external, their acceptance involuntary. The Israelites were a bullied and frightened people. Un ders tanding of the significance of the Law, there was none. It was constrictive of personality and choice be cause the patriarchs had not understood that they, them selves, were an outcropping of a deep inner life develop ment. In Christ's phraseology, it remained for the Law to be "fulfilled." Beyond Reason What was necessary? Was it not that the newest human sense be given equal, no, superior, status in relation to the older senses? This seems probable from Christ's teaching method. In his words we find almost nothing of syllogism, no ab stract construction of theory, no laying down of a THE PERCEPTUAL BASIS OF LIBERTY 273 logical case. Rather, he seemed to aim at startling or surprising a dormant sense so that in a burst of unaccus tomed activity it should break the surface of the subcon scious to be seen and dealt with. He triggered unused psychic complexes in friend and foe-intuitions, insights, theretofore suppressed emotions. Parable, imagery, allu sion, the shock of incredible assertion-in greater or lesser degree, these would provoke the inward sentience of his audience. These were no move to convince the intellect, but only the application of stimuli to which a special sense could respond. His struggle was frustrating. Listen to him in John VIII, 43: "Why do ye not understand my speech? even because ye cannot hear my word." He sought those who could respond: "He that hath ears to hear, let him hear." Later, Paul was to expand upon this fact: "... the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually dis cerned." The phenomena had to be perceived before it could enter into the mental processes.

First, as Christ implied, one must see the real source of the law. Scribes and Pharisees occupied the position of lawgivers. Theirs was external law applied to the ex ternals of man: his acts, his property, his outward rela tionships. Such lawmakers, "bind heavy burdens, griev ous to be borne." True law is in the nature of things and in the nature of the human being (The Kingdom of God is within you). Christ knew that murder, for example, was the end product of an inner ferment; it was objecti fied anger or greed. So also, with adultery, theft, and the 274 HAROLD B. ELSOM rest of the list. These were evil fruits whose roots drew sustenance from the older elements in man. True law would operate here, in the individual's own faculties. This individualism should be cultivated at whatever cost. Many would suffer but some would succeed (Wide is the gate and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruc tion but strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it). This was the hard fact: the destiny of the species depended on the toughness and wisdom of those possessing the capa bility of perceiving God and his creative principles of life. These were the things of God; Caesar had no proper function in them save to permit them to operate and to defend them.

Having developed this capability, men should sustain it in their consciousness, have faith in it, and be guided by it (Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind) . By doing this, men could achieve freedom (Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free). But no man could be free who coerced his neighbor (Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself) . Only through equal ity of respect for the conscience, responsibility, and voli tion of others could men become whole. Indeed, only through this sort of equality could the species be safe. What was the reason of it all? Why the millions of years of struggle of life on earth? Its achievement of ever greater complexity of tissue, organ, and sense? To what end does man, by means of his new awareness, consciously strain to be something other than what he has been?

THE PERCEPTUAL BASIS OF LIBERTY 275 Once more we turn our secular gaze upon the Bible. The answers stated there can be encompassed briefly: joy, happiness, well-being. In Chapter V of the Book of Matthew, Jesus, in the first eleven verses, uses the word, "blessed/' meaning a bestowal of happiness, nine times. In the twelfth, he tells us to "rejoice and be exceedingly glad." His expositor, Paul, in Ephesians, describes sing ing in the spirit and melody in the heart. There are nlany such examples, spoken in the shadow of mortal adversity. With the right sort of awareness one could see the princi ples of life, individual and social, which could free him from the crush of his terrible heritage. Such freedom, such resonance with divine pulse, would mean joy. Moral E111-phasisin the Declaration of Independence That the possessors of the enlivened moral faculty grew in numbers, history evidences abundantly. The unique sense began to assert itself in "the things that are Caesar's." We overleap seventeen centuries to find them expressing what they have seen in a political document.

We hear them saying, "We hold these truths to be self evident," that is, phenomena to be accepted because ex hibited to the senses. They were deemed to be true be cause they were the verified content of moral perception. They believed men to be creatures of God, under equal obligation, one to the other, each to the whole, to preserve and defend individual human effort to survive and achieve; to hold the individual harmless in the effectua tion of any chosen purpose not violative of the personal276 HAROLD B. ELSOM ity or property of another, safety and happiness of the citizen being the explicitly stated objectives of proper government. Some years later they draft an agreement by which they propose to live together. In it they said that men should be free to follow their personal routines in peace (in sure domestic tranquillity). They should be safe (pro vide for the common defense). They were to be free from the vexations and dangers attendant upon personal settlement of disputes, unjust taxation, monetary chi canery, and caprice of government (establish justice, pro mote the general welfare) . The generations were recog nized as being bound together in sacred compact (secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our posterity) .

What echos of the patriarchs and the prophets! What magnificent assent to the "fulfillment" of the Law! How spectacular and undreamed was the harvest! Still, there are those among us, historians and sociol ogists, who tell us that morals are no more than custom and environment; who cite other peoples in other places who believed in other rights and wrongs and other gods; who believe that the common man may be thumped and kneaded into any sort of thing that politics and tech nology may require. They work much grief-they with hold the animate part of the truth. Where the moral sense has not been nourished or has been diverted from its main direction, among great or little peoples, that nation or race has been stultified. Its exit from history has been a series of needless frustrations and pointless disas ters clustered about a core of ethical error.

THE PERCEPTUAL BASIS OF LIBERTY 277 A Vital Attribute The rewarding path is along the way discerned by the moral vision. It is a vital attribute even though many of our kind have not, as yet, acquired confidence in the stimuli it provides. ~lany of us continue to believe false hoods which the use of this sense would destroy, even as some centuries ago some men had preposterous credulity concerning physical facts which disciplined use of their regular senses would have precluded. As a current exam ple, many of us, evidently a voting majority, believe that individual wrongdoing can be transmuted into collective virtue; that individual sin can be purified by democratic ritual. We join together to vote ourselves exemption from the Decalogue, the New Testament, the Constitu tion, and the operations of Nature. And because our disdain of moral principle is collec tive, because it is implemented by technology, never was human hazard greater. We have parted with the safe guards of variety, multiplicity, diversity of purpose, and limited means of ages gone. Our more satanic Caesars were but pranksters when set against the scale of our Hit lers and Stalins; these, in turn, dwindle before the loom ing potential. Only the active use of the peculiar sense can be of any effect against the drift of the times. Not to rely upon it is as foolish as to forego sight or hear ing. It is at fearful risk that we continue to view its promptings as romantic idealism, scarce suited to the uses of this world.

Moral awareness began in the jungle in men who were 278 HAROLD B. ELSOM mostly beast. It was viable from the beginning, capable of surviving the wilderness; equal to growth amid bludgeon and ignorance. It had moved against all vicis situdes before history began. It stood up to stonings, crucifixions, hemlock, and the arena because it was tough. It is not weakened by sentiment. It is practical. Its goal is the wholeness of man because when man is complete, he is free. From birth to birth, century to century, the commun ion spreads. Its members willingly wear the manacles of the spirit. Because they do, they cannot resort to force to thrust their knowledge upon others. They cannot rig voting blocs; they cannot bilk their brother politically, economically, or intellectually. They give but to those who seek. They demonstrate only to those willing to ob serve. They look upon the mutilation of the earth, the poi sonings of its soils, its winds, its waters, and its minds with sorrow. They can see great nations and great peoples sickened with the malady of centralized coercion, the symptoms affecting every member of the social body: the family, the arts, public and private morals, education, religion.

Strangely enough, they expect all of these things to live. They believe that the moral attribute was inserted into the species long ago for two purposes: to serve as a safety mechanism, and to sense the way in which it should go. Despite the moiling of historical waters, it has been effective on both counts. Observed from primitive beginning to formal expression in documents utilized in THE PERCEPTUAL BASIS OF LIBERTY 279 the founding of the greatest nation in history, the in crease of the moral faculty as a factor in human destiny appears considerable. In view of its source, it is not likely that it will fall short of its objective-man as a whole creature. Moral man, speaking of us all, may well join with the English Book of Common Prayer in the supplication, "Grant that the old Adam in these persons may be so buried, that the new man may be raised up in them." ,History points in this direction. It is the direction in which the libertarian would go.