Orthobiosis (optimistic science and morality)

Orthobiosis is a moral ideal outlined in two books by I.I. Mechnikov Sketches about human nature (Moscow 1904) and studies of optimism (Moscow 1907). Books of exciting interest. They draw our attention to themselves as an original experience of a natural scientific substantiation of a harmonious outlook on life and, in particular, ethics. In these books, the reader encounters discussions about disharmonies in human nature and life, about illness, old age and death, about optimism and pessimism, about natural scientific morality. By discussing these topics, the author builds his optimistic worldview, and central to it is the question of natural or physiological (as opposed to pathological) old age and death, the scientific fight against disease and premature aging, and the extension of human life to the limit when the death instinct appears or should appear. The basic train of thought that unites all these subjects is as follows. Man, descended from some great ape, has inherited an organization adapted to living conditions completely different from those in which he has to live. Gifted with an incomparably more developed brain than his animal ancestors, man opened a new path into the evolution of higher beings. Such a rapid change in nature led to a whole series of organic disharmonies, which made themselves felt all the more strongly as people became smarter and more sensitive. Hence - a whole string of misfortunes that poor humanity tried to eliminate by all means available to it. But the greatest discord in human nature lies in pathological old age and the inability to live up to the instinct of natural death. Realizing the powerlessness of humanity to restore such a desired harmony, many have come to terms with passive fatalism and even began to think that human life is a kind of irony of fate and constitutes a false step in the development of living beings. Exact science, developing slowly but in a certain direction, finally tried to take matters into its own hands. She successfully fights diseases, she will also eliminate pathological old age. This is the only basis for an optimistic outlook on life. To the question: “Where do we come from?” - science can give only one answer: “man is a kind of monkey freak, gifted with a great mind and capable of going very far.” To the questions “Where are we going?” – science can also give the only answer: death awaits us, which is complete destruction. But whereas previously such an answer struck terror into our hearts, due to the conditions in which this inevitable destruction overtook man, from the point of view of science, death is a blessing, a normal end. Death, like destruction, is unbearable when it meets a person who has not yet completed his physiological development and fully possesses the life instinct. But the death instinct, which ends a long old age, changes the whole matter. Perhaps this instinct must be accompanied by a wonderful sensation, better than all other sensations that we are capable of experiencing. Perhaps the anxious search for the fulfillment of human life is nothing more than a manifestation of a vague desire for sensations of the onset of natural death. It must be something similar to the vague feelings of young virgins that precede true love. Meanwhile, dying under modern conditions, with complete attachment to life, with a decisive absence of the death instinct, people are not able to feel all the beauty of death - and they can be compared with women who got married before the development of their sexual desire and die during childbirth without experiencing what a real love instinct is. The successes of culture in general and medicine have greatly reduced the number of such women; one must hope that science will achieve the same successes in relation to the instinct of natural death. However, this hope cannot be called firmly founded. In fact, what is striking is that there is no agreement among scientists on the issue of the causes of old age and on the ways to replace old age with pathological old age with physiological old age. I.I. Mechnikov sees these reasons in the intestinal flora, in those microbes that multiply in the useless colon and poison the body, and in the victory that phagocytes and macrophages gain over the noble elements of the body. This also includes the regimen and therapy he recommends for achieving longevity. But this is one of dozens of different opinions on this issue. To build a philosophy of life on such a hypothesis, and only on it, is strange, to say the least. But Mr. Mechnikov’s philosophy encounters more decisive difficulties along its path, which he, however, does not notice. He himself notes the fact that the feeling of life, or the instinct of life, that is, attachment to it, appears in a person relatively late and, in any case, distinguishes old age from youth. For young people, it is incomparably easier to part with life than for adults and old people. Reviewing pessimistic systems, Mr. Mechnikov observes that they were usually created by philosophers either in illness or in youth. Their reason is the lack of a sense of life, which appears in old age and makes older people optimistic. Goethe, on whom Mr. Mechnikov dwells especially carefully, was a pessimist in his youth, and an optimist in old age. Mr. Mechnikov can test this law on himself. In the preface to the first book, he reports about himself that he began with an essay in the “Bulletin of Europe” in 1871, in which he first expressed thoughts about the disharmony of human nature, as a source of great disasters. “It seemed to me that the fundamental flaw in human nature must inevitably lead to the denial of existence, and I soon began to develop the question of suicide, hoping to find enough factual evidence in favor of my point of view ... Positive knowledge seemed to me capable of justifying the pessimistic worldview in which I was becoming more and more strengthened. Youthful sensitivity, for its part, gave him significant food... But life went on as usual. Youthful sensitivity and demands from life were replaced by calmer feelings of mature and old age.” The pessimistic worldview gave way to an optimistic one... So, what turns out to be? The instinct of life, which is a necessary assumption of an optimistic outlook on life, is revealed only over the years, although old age is now known as “disgusting.” pathological, painful. Science, for a more radical substantiation of optimism, replaces pathological old age with physiological, cheerful, vigorous old age. At the same time, scientific optimism is based on the hope that prolonged physiological old age will reveal the death instinct deeply embedded in human nature, and it is not difficult to see that this is a hypothetical hope, for in his energetic searches Mr. Mechnikov, it seems, managed only once to come across a clear manifestation of the death instinct; he managed to meet only one old woman who wanted to die, fed up with life. But isn't there a tragic contradiction in this? It doesn’t matter whether Mr. Mechnikov noticed in one or ten old men the instinct of death, clearly revealed. But isn’t there a contradiction in the fact that at the same time a heightened sense of life is attributed to old age and the hope is expressed for the discovery of an instinct in old age in the fact that this is jointly the hope for a painless physiological old age and for the senile instinct of death? Of course, Mr. Mechnikov thinks that with a significant duration of physiological old age, there will be an opportunity to enjoy a long old age, to be satisfied with life, and there will be time to open up to the instinct of death - and old age will be pleasant, and death will be desired. With all this, if even now old people do not want to die and they are more attached to life than young people, if even now the feeling of life grows over the years, although now only pathological, painful old age is known, is it possible to hope that this attachment will disappear when the science of prolonging old age and making it painless? G. Mechnikov recalls stories about bygone days, when people, dying in extreme old age, were “saturated with life.” But those were times similar to ours in the physiological sense of old age and deeply different from ours in the mental sense. That was the youth of humanity, and now is its old age. Death is the same now as it was then, but it is no longer encountered by humans in the same way. And nothing in the modern psyche can be changed by prolonging old age, prolonging life. Well, what can you do if today “old people regret life more than young people” (Rousseau)? Now an old man (French philosopher Renouvier) says and feels: “When a person is old, even very old, and accustomed to life, then dying is very difficult for an old man who does not have the strength to come to terms with death.” Not only that. Is it necessary to desire the human feeling of death and replace it with an animal feeling for it? How can we forget the deep thought contained in the words of Cicero: “the life of a philosopher is a constant reflection on death”, in the words of Schopenhauer: “it is unlikely that philosophy could exist without death”, and in the words of Guyot: “religion seems mostly to be a reflection on death”?... What would happen to love and sacrifice if the “human” feeling of death disappeared?.. Let us return to the presentation of Mr. Mechnikov’s optimistic worldview. The successes of scientific medicine form the foundation of his positive worldview “The enormous successes of medicine in the second half of the last century gave hope for a better future. Human existence, as it appears based on the data of human nature, could radically change if it were possible to change this nature. Human life has gone crazy halfway, and our old age is a disease that needs to be treated like any other. Once old age is cured and made physiological, it will lead to a truly natural end, which must be deeply embedded in our nature. Viewed in this way, human life ceases to be an absurdity; it receives meaning and purpose towards which people must consciously strive. Only science is capable of solving the problem of human existence, and therefore it must be given the widest field of activity in this direction.” Life outlook of Mr. Mechnikov has a scientific outlook on life and his ethical views are scientifically positive views. So, what is the purpose and meaning of human life according to a strictly scientific view? “The normal end, which comes after the development of the death instinct, can be looked upon as the ultimate goal of human existence.” So says science. Mechnikov approvingly quotes Schopenhauer's words and Baudelaire's poems about death as the goal of life. For our part, we could note that Metchnikoff, in his positive foundation, does not have a point of support for assimilating a mystical view of death in the spirit of Schopenhauer and Baudelaire. He is not one of those thinkers. for whom the mystical mystery of death serves as a source of philosophy. He must consistently regard death in a purely positive sense, with positive indifference. He should have spoken about death as the famous Russian thinker and publicist recently said about it, who wrote the following. “Mysticism has the ability to lengthen, expand, extend “somewhere”, “endless.” Death, entwined with mysticism, seems endless, huge, covering everything. But with the same right, life can demand a mystical robe for itself: and under its cover it will appear as an immeasurably endless death, endless in its meaning, in its mercy, in the fact that it is sweet, and in what and why it is sweet. If you want “mysticism,” go there, take it here too. And if you recognize life, food, contentment, literature only as “small empirical facts,” then let me look at death, that I “will catch a cold, have pneumonia, tingling in my chest, cough, and die.” Only. Why not only? The empirical fact of death is no longer than any empirical fact in life, and the mystical fact of death is much shorter and simpler than the fact of life from the angle of a mystical view of it. It seems to me that our business on earth is simple: do your job well. And nothing more!.. Death is certainly hard, but the joy of life is endless. Death is “meaningless”, well, but this cannot be said about life, and everything “meaningful” is of course longer, more complex than “meaningless”. What is "meaningless" at the end of "meaningful"? Dot. Well, let this end be put after the wonderful book that was our life. This book is wise (for everyone). This book is sweet. This book is bitter. Both holy and sinful. Endless book! There is nothing (in the entire universe) that is so great, invaluable, dear, the best of the best, than the ordinary life of an ordinary person.” This is how Mr. Mechnikov, who does not want to know any metaphysics, does not want to know the “goals” and “motives” of nature, does not know and does not want to know any religion, any secret. How he repeats the words of Schopenhauer that “death should be looked at as the real goal of life,” and the words of Baudelaire: c'est la mort, qui console, helas! et qui tait vivre; c'est le but de la vie? (Here one could also recall our O. Sologub). After all, Schopenhauer could have said this, and Baudelaire could have said this, but this mysticism of death does not suit Mr. Mechnikov at all. Death cannot, from Mechnikov’s positive point of view, serve as the goal of human life - and he must admit that he not only does not know the goals that nature sets for man, he does not know mystical and religious goals, but he also does not know the goals of life that man himself could set for himself. He knows only the end of life, but the last point of the book cannot be called the purpose of the book. For positivism, life is purposeless! From the imaginary purpose of life, Mr. Mechnikov moves on to the meaning of life, the tasks of behavior. He writes: “Before reaching the normal end of life, one must experience a whole normal life, a life that must also be satisfied. Knowing the real purpose of existence greatly facilitates this task, indicating to us the behavior that must be adhered to throughout life.” In Mechnikov’s first book, there are interesting pages (153–161), on which he raises the question of whether science can replace religion and philosophy) in the question of the meaning of life and morality. Mechnikov’s own judgments are somewhat vague, but he cites the well-known opinions of Zh.Zh. Rousseau, Brunetiere, du Bois Reymond, Tolstoy - that it is not the business of science to solve these issues, and the statement of S. Richet that science has never made any promises and that these promises can only be found in popular scientific works. Mechnikov seems to accept the opinion of S. Richet and, apparently, does not approve of the popularizers, Buchner and Haeckel, who tried to “even define natural morality” and the meaning of life. Meanwhile, what is Mechnikov himself doing? He sins against the undoubted truth that it is not the business of natural science to talk about what should be - it is limited only to what is. In other places (Etudes on the Nature of Man p. 4 seq. and Etudes of Optimism p. 233 seq.) Mechnikov speaks out against the religious-mystical construction of ethics and adopts the opinion of those philosophers who based the morality of man on his nature and pointed out his calling in the highest, most complete and most possible harmonious development of his life, all the abilities of his nature. However, he also introduced amendments to the teachings of these philosophers. Not accepting religious teachings that considered human nature to be fundamentally perverted, he at the same time does not fully approve of those who base their ethical views on human nature in its given state. “Science has revealed to us that man, descended from animals, has in his nature both good and bad properties, and that it is the latter that make our existence so miserable. But human nature is changeable and can be remade for the benefit of humanity. Morality, therefore, should not be based on perverted human nature, as it is now, but on ideal, i.e. the way it should become in the future. First of all, one should try to restore the correct evolution of human life, that is, turn its disharmony into harmony. This is orthobiosis. As the goal of human life and the task of human activity, orthobiosis is the completion of the full physiological cycle of life with normal old age, leading to the loss of the life instinct and the emergence of the instinct of natural death. This is, first of all, strictly scientific ethics. “The improvement of human nature requires a deep knowledge of it.” Science should be given all the comforts and freedom. “Once we have come to the conclusion that the mystical and metaphysical systems cannot solve the problems of human happiness and death and that exact science alone is capable of accomplishing this, then it becomes necessary to remove the obstacles that hinder its success.” School years should be much longer. The more the mass of knowledge increases, the more time will be needed to study it. This preparatory period will serve as a prelude to maturity and ideal old age. Old age, which under present conditions is rather an unnecessary burden for the community, will become a working period, useful to society. Old people, no longer subject to loss of memory or weakening of mental faculties, will be able to apply their greater experience to the most complex and subtle tasks of social life. Young people for the most part are very bad politicians. In the future, these difficult and complex responsibilities will be entrusted to the elderly. Then politics and justice, the current shortcomings of which are explained by the lack of solid foundations, will be significantly improved. In this regard, Mechnikov speaks out against modern idols, such as universal voting, public opinion and referendum, in which the ignorant masses are called upon to resolve issues that require diverse and deep knowledge. As for social and universal harmony, here too we have to rely only on science. Previously, it was thought that love for one's neighbor progresses and becomes generalized. Family love spread to the tribe and then to the nation. They thought that there was no obstacle to spreading it to all of humanity. But, since the great improvement and spread of communications, the vague concept of humanity has been replaced by a definite acquaintance with the inferior native races. We became convinced that “humanity” in the previous sense of the word does not exist and does not exist - so great is the difference between primitive and civilized peoples. Exact science, represented by e.g. the famous German physical chemist Oswald (Vorlesungen iiber Naturphilosophie), the famous Haeckel, reduces the spread of social feelings over the entire human race, tends to limit altruistic activity much more in relation to people of lower races than to their compatriots or comrades in position in public life 1. Unification in the name of a religious ideal is something science doesn’t want to know at all. However, she is not helpless in the face of this task. With the development of means of communication, different nations come more and more into contact with one another. Therefore, knowledge of foreign languages ​​has become one of the first necessities of modern life. Under these conditions, the national bond should weaken in the same way as the family bond weakened, but the hostility that was felt towards people speaking an incomprehensible language turned into solidarity when they began to understand them. Recognition of the true goal of human existence and science, as the only means to achieve it, can serve as an ideal for uniting people. They will group around him, as around a religious ideal. On the issue of personal morality, Mechnikov does not agree with Kant, who “based the theory of morality not on the feeling of sympathy or kindness that attracts us to do good to our neighbors, but solely on the sense of duty.” Kant's moral teaching could only be followed by people who constitute an exception to the general rule, since the majority of humanity obeys their inclinations rather than a sense of duty. In addition, only a poorly developed person can accept good from everyone, without wondering whether this good is done under the influence of sympathy or out of a sense of duty. But a person of a higher culture will not accept services done not from a good heart, but out of a sense of duty. Often you even have to hide your inner motives in order not to offend the scrupulosity of the person for whom the moral act is being performed. According to Kant, one must act in such a way that the principle of personal will can always simultaneously serve as the basis for universal legislation. False promises, theft, suicide, according to this principle, are immoral because they cannot be generally accepted. But Kant has only one side of the problem in mind. Moral behavior very often must be limited and cannot be extended to all humanity. So, for example, if someone eager to sacrifice himself for the good of others wanted to evaluate his action on the basis of Kant’s formula, he would have to draw the same conclusion as regarding suicide: if everyone sacrificed their lives for others, then in the end no one would survive. Consequently, sacrificing life to others is an immoral act, etc. It is clear that Kant, in his search for the rational basis of morality, found only its external form, in which the internal content of morality is absent. For a moral person, it is not enough to be guided by a sense of duty alone; he also needs to know what result his actions will lead to. If it is immoral to make false promises, it is because no one will trust them anymore, and yet trust is necessary for the good of people. According to Kant's formula, theft is condemnable because, having become widespread, it will make property impossible. The latter, generally speaking, is a benefit for people. Suicide contradicts the principles of Kant, because it would lead to the suppression of the human race. Life is a good that should not be wasted. Despite all Kant's efforts to base his theory of rational morality beyond the concept of the common good, he failed to eliminate the latter. Mechnikov reads from Kant the idea that rational ethics should not be consistent with human nature in its present form - and this idea obviously fits Mechnikov’s view. But he could not agree with the shade in Kant’s thought that the moral will is able to modify nature, subordinating it to its own laws. More in his spirit is Paulsen’s interpretation of Kant’s formula, according to whom “ethical laws should be rules that can serve as the natural legislation of human life. In other words, these are rules which, governing behavior as a law of nature, would result in the preservation and highest development of human life.” On the other hand, Mechnikov also retreats from the ethical views of Herbert Spencer, who teaches that morality should be aimed at achieving the fullest and broadest possible life. Laziness and drunkenness, according to the generally accepted opinion, are immoral, but is it because they interfere with the “full and broad life” according to the formula of Herbert Spencer? After all, it is precisely by this that the supporters of this theory justify all sorts of excesses, without which the fullness and breadth of life seems impossible to them. Despite the fact that vices such as laziness and drunkenness are closely related to the properties of human nature, they are immoral because they interfere with the completion of the cycle of ideal human existence. Next. For Herbert Sienser, too much complexity in the life of modern civilized peoples is a sign of progress - according to Mechnikov, this is not true. Spencer talk about food, its variety and preparation. However, there is no doubt that its complexity is harmful from the point of view of physiological old age and that the simpler food of less civilized peoples is healthier. From this point of view, true progress lies in eliminating modern cuisine and returning to the simple food of our ancestors. True hygiene also does not approve of too much differentiation in modern clothing and housing. While luxury, which has done so much harm to people, is fully included in the formula for the transition “from indefinite homogeneity to definite heterogeneity,” Mechnikov explains it with a pessimistic worldview. Pessimistic wisdom teaches that one should enjoy life as much as possible, since a person is unable to solve problems about the purpose of existence. This teaching became a guiding one and led to a life organization that continued to progress along this Epicurean path. But once the meaning and purpose of life become defined, true good can no longer lie in luxury, which is contrary to the improvement of the normal cycle of human life. Instead of abusing all pleasures, young people, convinced that this would lead to the sad, pathological consequences of old age and death, will, on the contrary, prepare themselves with modesty and moderation for physiological old age and natural death. Even without accepting the hypothesis of the instinct of natural death, which ends a normal life, it cannot be denied that youth is only a preparatory stage and that only at a certain age the soul reaches its full development. This recognition should constitute the basic principle of the science of life and guide pedagogy and practical philosophy. So, personal morality consists in such behavior in which the normal cycle of life can be completed, leading to the fullest possible sense of satisfaction, which is achievable only in old age. That is why we have the right to call a person immoral who, in his youth, wastes his health and strength and thereby deprives himself of the opportunity to feel the greatest satisfaction in life. This principle determines the relationship of a husband to his wife and a mother to her children: everyone wants a normal life for themselves and for their loved ones. This, according to Mechnikov, says it all. Then, in view of this, in the interests of everyone and his family, it is necessary to restrain one’s antisocial instincts. It is necessary, for example, to have a particularly humane attitude towards servants. The health of masters is very often connected with the behavior of servants. She must live in good conditions in order to be able to conscientiously follow the rules of hygiene. Let's take another example, namely anger. It is undeniably injurious to health and must therefore be curbed in the interest of the person who has a tendency to become angry. Strong anger often causes rupture of blood vessels, diabetes mellitus, and sometimes even the development of cataracts. As everyone knows, luxury habits are often harmful to health. Overwhelming grievances and sleepless nights can deeply disrupt the proper functioning of organs. The conviction that a luxurious life shortens existence and prevents a person from achieving the greatest satisfaction will be much more effective against luxury than an appeal to feelings of sympathy. In view of the fact that the vast majority of people in life are guided mainly by egoism, any moral theory that has a claim to application in practice must take this circumstance into account. Herbert Sienser insists that for practical application the rules of morality should not demand too much from a person, otherwise even the best teaching will remain a dead letter. He believes, however, that in the future humanity will improve so much that behavior will become moral without any coercion, so to speak, instinctively. The English philosopher imagines future humanity completely opposite to Kant's ideal. He thinks that the world will not be populated by people filled with a sense of duty, contrary to the egoistic inclinations of man, but by people who will be moral by “inclination,” which constitutes the true beauty of life. This ideal is so far from reality that it is difficult to form an idea of ​​the order of things in its implementation. It is very likely that the world would not be so charming if it were inhabited only by people with overdeveloped feelings of sympathy. The latter is mostly a reaction against some great evil. When evil itself disappears, it can become not only useless, but even shy and harmful. Since it is certain that with the progress of civilization the great evils of mankind will have to diminish, and perhaps even disappear altogether, the sacrifices directed against them will also have to decrease. Rational morality has the right to foresee a time when people will reach such a degree of perfection that instead of enjoying the sympathy of their neighbor, they will positively reject it. So, in the future, what will be realized is not the Kantian ideal of virtuous people doing good out of a sense of duty, nor the Spencerian ideal of people who feel the instinctive need to help their neighbors. Future humanity will be more likely to realize the ideal of self-help when people no longer allow themselves to be benefited. Rational morality cannot be based on human nature as it really is. Humanity should no longer consider the harmonious functioning of all organs as an ideal - this ideal of antiquity, passed on to our times. There is no need to call into action organs that are on the way to atrophy, and many natural signs, perhaps useful to an animal, should disappear in humans. Human nature, capable of change in the same way as the nature of organisms in general, must be modified in accordance with a certain ideal. A gardener or cattle breeder does not stop at the given nature of the plants or animals that occupy them, but modify it according to need. In the same way, a learned philosopher should not look at modern human nature as something unshakable, but should strive to change it for the benefit of people. Of course, methods suitable for plants and animals must be completely changed when applied to humans. There can be no question here of selection and crossings applicable to plants and animals. With all this, you can quite consciously and actively move towards the ideal destined for yourself, in contrast to the passivity that religion recommends. You can interfere with the natural flow of life. Thus, when the death instinct does not occur at a very old age, then nothing prevents one from shortening one’s life if death is slow to occur after the appearance of this instinct. Such an act would be consistent with the ideal, although it would go against established human nature. Another example of such a contradiction is represented by reproduction. Although, according to the laws of nature, a person is able to multiply very much, the ideal of his well-being requires limiting fertility. Orthobiosis, based on knowledge of human nature, prescribes the limitation of this completely natural function. This measure, already inevitable in some cases, will have to spread with new successes in the fight against disease, as well as with the lengthening of life and the reduction of war. It will be one of the main means of reducing the crude methods of the struggle for existence and the development of moral behavior of people. Mechnikov says that the intentions of nature are completely unknown to me. We cannot comprehend the unknown, its plans and intentions. Let us leave “nature” aside and deal only with what is accessible to our mind. The latter tells us that man is capable of great things; that is why one should wish for him to modify human nature and transform its disharmonies into harmonies. The will of man alone can achieve this ideal. This is morality according to the ideal of orthobiosis... What can we say about no? The terrible simplicity of this ethics is stunning. It is based entirely on the hope of reducing the intestinal flora by consuming sour milk; it does not go beyond physiological old age. With amazing naivety, Mechnikov admits: “I was reproached for the fact that in my system body hygiene occupies too large a place. But this cannot be otherwise, because health plays a predominant role in life.” We have already seen that Mechnikov’s moral theory “takes great account of the fact that the vast majority of people in life are guided mainly by egoism.” Health and selfishness! Who will argue against the fact that health plays a predominant role in life, that selfishness, natural self-love, by which everyone nourishes and warms his flesh, constitutes the lower foundation of life, without which no ethical construction is possible. The teaching of the old Stoics that bodily illnesses do not in any way affect the soul and illnesses do not predispose it to vices, together with Clement of Alexandria, must be called worthy of surprise. If we leave aside those exceptions when a person, due to special spiritual firmness, overcomes misfortunes, illnesses and poverty turns to his moral benefit - with these exceptions, as a general rule we must recognize that in a sick body, especially in a badly born and badly educated one, there cannot be a healthy spirit, that from involuntary bodily poverty the soul is no less poor than the body 2. And again, if you met a person who naturally does not love himself, does not have a natural inclination for earthly goods, does not have a sense of the beautiful and sublime, does not know the bliss of knowledge and improvement, is alien to attachment to his own, to his family, to his nation, then do not think of raising such a monster, such a monster to the highest levels of morality, to the raptures of love and self-sacrifice 3. If someone does not have natural love for himself, does not have health from birth and does not by nature know healthy egoism, this is the same as if a person were free from attraction to the earth, possessed of airy lightness: just as in the latter case a person would lack a point of support and he could neither lift anything nor rise, so naturally those who do not have a sense of earthly goods are not capable of the highest moral rise 4 . Who will argue against this? But you can talk about this seriously only in two cases: either in polemics with abstract spiritualism, or for pedagogical purposes. And undoubtedly, Mr. Mechnikov’s books are very useful for young people. Just as physical care for youth is necessary, so it is necessary for youth to clarify the inextricable connection between the sins of youth and the diseases of old age, between individual behavior and social troubles, to clarify everyone’s personal interest in cultural and social progress and the immeasurable role of knowledge in the latter. The spread of an optimistic worldview should also be considered morally desirable, because love of life is a necessary prerequisite for an ethical worldview. And suffering must be included in the system of life understanding: suffering and humility give our worldview the features of the tragically sublime. Oscar Wilde sang a hymn to suffering in De profundis, and Guyot speaks about the inevitability of religious humility in Irreligion de I'avenir. But suffering comes towards us and humility is instilled in us by the situation in the world; love for life must come from us, for it is half the battle. “And what is suffering? I am not afraid of it, even if it is countless... I will overcome everything, all suffering, just to say and tell myself every minute: I am! In a thousand torments - I am, in torture I writhe - but I am”!... This is a complete and juicy philosophy of life. When a person does not have the beauty of life, he does not experience the joy of life, he will not understand anything in human and world existence. All this is true. But to replace all morality with bodily hygiene, to reduce all ethics to egoism, to limit all hopes to prolonged old age, is no less terrible than the most abstract, cerebral, dead spiritualism. The entire area of ​​ethics is divided into several departments, all morality is divided into several stages. Another thing is the pedagogical side of morality, that is, the morality of children who need to be instilled with love for family, obedience, and joy of life; Another thing is utilitarian, communal, social morality, which society dictates to the individual, based on the iron necessity and decisive convention of the individual’s position in society; Another matter, finally, is the intimate morality of the individual, who feels at his own risk, is based on his entire knowledge of life, determines his attitude towards the whole world, rising above the boundaries of childhood security and social convention. In this last respect, the moral question is a question about the justification of life, about the meaning of existence. - “Didn’t I try, tried with all my might, to find an excuse for my life”? This is what Anna Karenina said, and these words can be repeated by every developed personality. This is the most burning quest of a person - the search for the meaning of life, the thirst to justify one’s life - to justify it before one’s soul, before one’s conscience. A developed personality cannot live if she does not have confidence in why she lives, if she does not have confidence that she is following the real path and doing the right thing. Body hygiene, healthy egoism, prolonged old age, a sense of life, the instinct of death - this does not replace the meaning of life, this does not close the question of justifying life, this is only “half the story,” the background against which the final task of moral philosophy arises. It must answer the question why we need a physically healthy, selfishly comfortable, long life. Positive philosophy is powerless in the face of this question. And firstly, the scientific nature of positive ethics turns out to be untenable. Positive, that is, truly scientific ethics has as its task knowledge, and not understanding or explanation, not the creation of standards of life. It satisfies primarily the needs of the mind, and not the needs of activity. This is what Lévy-Bruhl writes (Morale et la science des moeurs). But this is what we read from Paulsen in his Ethics. “If people were primarily theoreticians, then they could be satisfied with this. This is not the case; they are, first and foremost, beings capable of will and action. Practical problems arise earlier and are more important than theoretical problems. If we say that the sciences arose to solve practical problems, then there will not be a big mistake. Knowledge, at least in its initial emergence, is a means for practical purposes: anatomy and physiology for the art of medicine, geometry for measuring the earth. So philosophy, or theoretical knowledge in general, arose initially thanks to the question of the meaning and tasks of life. Further, one can even say that the last reason that prompts a person to think about the nature of the universe remains at all times the need to give himself an account of the meaning, origin and purpose of his own life. Therefore, in ethics is the primary source and goal of all philosophy. Science exists for life, not life for science.” The second main thesis of positive ethics is that morality is determined by the laws that govern life. We find this thesis in Razenhofer (Positive Ethik), Lévy-Bruhl and other representatives of positive ethics. According to the first, the basis for morality is given in human nature itself and its laws. Morality consists in the agreement of the will with natural laws (die Uebereinstimmung des Willens mit den Forderungen der Naturgesetze. S. 116). He derives moral motives and goals from the given and unchangeable nature of man and from the achieved stages of his development. It is not the will that is the source of morality, but the development of our inherent interest, rooted in our natural abilities (S. 66). For a person, morally obligatory coincides with the dictates of natural law (118). Hence, the main task of ethics is to study the natural laws that determine human life. In the same way, Lévy-Bruhl calls the moral views prevailing in a particular society “data” that constitute a natural subject of study for ethical science. “Ethics must study the fact of conscience, as it appears in different human societies, in exactly the same sense as the science of physical nature studies its subject. Various moralities, that is, observable systems of rules, regulations, imperatives and prohibitions, are the same social facts as the facts of religions, languages ​​and law. All these social institutions seem to us to be equally natural and at the same time consistent with each other. Moral rules have the same kind of reality as other social facts (La morale et la science des moeurs pp. 98–99). We do not need to challenge this positivistic method in its entirety. We can agree that morality must be consistent with human nature, with natural laws. But does this mean that natural laws clip a person’s wings and do not give the slightest scope to his ideal aspirations? Is it not possible, relying on the most natural laws, to go against nature and establish a countercurrent? The famous Krapotkin, in his essay “Modern Science and Anarchism,” cites an excerpt from a letter to him from one biologist, who writes: “Scientists unfamiliar with the natural sciences are unable to understand the true meaning of the law of nature; they are blinded by the word law and they imagine that the law has a fatal force from which it is impossible to get rid of. The naturalist knows that science can paralyze the harmful consequences of the law, that often a person who goes against nature wins. Gravity makes bodies fall, but it also makes a balloon rise.” That is In the name of life, a person is selfish, but in the name of life he can go to the point of self-denial. Or - the famous Berthelot, who argued that “science alone provides the unshakable foundations of morality,” distinguishes between positive science and ideal science. “Science,” he writes, appears to us from a double point of view. We distinguish between positive science, the one that serves as the only basis for all kinds of applications - both in the material sphere and in the moral - and ideal science, embracing our immediate hopes, the creations of our imagination, and more distant probable assumptions... Human knowledge is acquired by only one method - by observing facts, but for this there are two sources, one internal, the other external. The senses reveal to us the external world: this is the point of departure of all the physical, natural and historical sciences. In this way we recognize the insignificance and subordination of individual existence in relation to all humanity in its past and present - the insignificance and subordination of humanity itself, suppressed and, as it were, absorbed by the totality of the boundless universe. From this point of view, all morality comes down to submission to the inevitability of world laws. Everything in this area is objective. On the contrary, in the inner world, in the world of consciousness, a person stands alone; his mind, his feeling are the measure of all things. These latter exist for us only under the condition of being known to us; from this point of view, they exist only for our mind and in our mind. Everything in this area is subjective. These two sources, internal and external, from where our positive knowledge comes, are also the sources of our morality. Just as next to positive science there is an ideal science, although it stems from it, but often looks ahead and outlines its further path, in the same way there is an ideal morality that heralds the arrival and precedes the development of the morality of the future. Such was the ideal morality of the Greek philosophers, which the church fathers praised, attributing it to the miraculous from above; This was also the moral teaching of the philosophers of the 17th century, who expressed the idea of ​​equality proclaimed by the French Revolution. This is the moral teaching of modern thinkers who paint the ideals of the future – the brotherhood of peoples and the universal solidarity of people”... These are the voices from the camp, from the depths of the camp, representatives of positive morality. The immutability of the natural laws governing human life does not close the possibility for us to go with the counter-current of nature. And Mr. Mechnikov himself, as we have seen, speaks of the need for conscious intervention in the course of nature, the need to base morality not on a given nature, full of disharmonies, but on human nature, as it will be after the disharmonies are removed. However, what kind of intervention is this? He knows only mechanical interference in natural life: constant feeding on sour milk, more or less ordinary induced abortion, sometimes suicide. Add to this the knowledge of languages ​​necessary for universal human solidarity. That's it! Mechnikov’s worldview is, in the language of N.V. Bugaev, there is a worldview that is entirely analytical, or mechanical. The changes that he would like to make in human nature are connected with this nature by the nature of continuity, it is still the same nature in greater or lesser quantities. Along with the analytical, possibly arrhythmological point of view, along with continuity, discontinuity must also be recognized, and this other point of view gives rise to heterogeneous phenomena, putting forward the individual in accordance with the universal, the personal with the social, expediency with causality, and self-negation with self-affirmation. “Life consists of a constant desire to give a legitimate outcome to various and, apparently, opposing attractions. In the antinomy that these concepts introduce lies the vital pulse that permeates everything that thinks, suffers, loves.” We still “remain on the same objective and scientific ground,” but for us the difference is visible between the idea according to which the object of our ideal aspirations is an inevitable and uniformly universal result of natural evolution, and the idea that takes into account individual centers of feeling and activity. If there are no simple bodies of any density, but each simple body is an independent chemical individual, if not every combination of sounds produces harmony, if nature is not just a mechanism, but an organism in which independent and amateur individuals act, then the rebirth of man is possible in the sense of a heterogeneous flow. This opens up completely new horizons for our worldview. Let life stand above all and its laws are stronger than all, but in the name of the same life, selfishness and self-denial are possible, and the latter will no longer be hidden selfishness. It is especially important that the arrhythmological point of view does not in the least cancel out the analytical one: they are completely compatible. Body hygiene, health, longevity are completely one thing, but spiritual interests, the meaning of life, its justification are another. And limiting himself to a mechanical view of life, Mr. Mechnikov deprives it of any meaning. Wed Fundamentals of Christianity vol. III, p. 72. Wed. Fundamentals of Christianity vol. III, p. 82 and vol. IV, p. 128. Love for humanity, as a simple replacement for missing natural affections, is the most terrible caricature that one can imagine. In L. Andreev’s last work, My Notes, the hero is a mad, musty coward, the most terrible distortion of a person, is a caricature where he speaks of his love for humanity: “... Without exchanging my feelings of love for petty personal attachments, I thereby, at the same time. I free him for a broad and powerful love for humanity. This is the love of a soulless idol, a rotting ruin!