Traditionally, the power to give life was seen to be God’s prerogative. It was the ultimate power that only God possessed. But what exactly does that mean? Does it mean that it’s impossible for us ever to gain the power to give life? Or does it simply mean that whoever acquired it would be like God himself, equal to him in power and knowledge?
This thought, or hope, inspired not only the efforts of Dr. Frankenstein, but also those of countless alchemists, those harbingers of modern science, when they were trying to figure out how to transform things into other things: lead into gold, dead matter into something living. In their search for the philosopher’s stone and the elixir of life, often seen as the same substance, which was supposed to give those who got hold of it wealth, wisdom, and power over life and death, they followed the path that was already suggested by the Genesis chapter in the Bible. We are used to thinking that Adam and Eve were expelled from the Garden of Eden for having eaten from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, but that’s not entirely true. If you read closely you’ll find that in fact God wants them out because he’s afraid that now that they have smartened up they might also eat from the second unusual tree in the Garden, namely the tree of life:
Behold, the man has become like one of Us, knowing good and evil; and now, he might stretch out his hand, and take also from the tree of life, and eat, and live forever. (Genesis 3:22)
If they did eat from it, they would be, in all relevant respects, just like him, and he can’t have that. Adam and Eve’s expulsion from the Garden of Eden is not so much a punishment as a preventative measure: God protects his privilege.
It’s not really clear, though, why we shouldn’t aspire to become immortal, why this is being withheld from us. God’s jealousy seems to be all that stands between us and eternal life. There’s no consideration of what is good for us. Of course we don’t necessarily need a better reason or any reason at all. Perhaps all we need to know is that if we try to pull a Frankenstein we will be punished. It could be just a fact of life that certain things need to be left alone, because if they are not, then we’ll have to deal with some very unpleasant consequences.
So what we are being warned against is simply that if we cross certain lines and enter areas that have never been explored before, then the consequences are unforeseeable and likely to be bad. We are not made for crossing those lines. Better safe than sorry. Beware of the unknown. So the message is perhaps not that it is in some way morally wrong to cross those boundaries and “emulate God,” but simply that it is highly dangerous.
Frankenstein’s story brings to mind that of the sorcerer’s apprentice. While his master’s away, the apprentice can’t resist the temptation to play master himself. He tries out the magic spells he has heard his master use, and it’s working just fine. He gets the broom to fetch water to prepare a bath for him. That was easy. Unfortunately, when the bath is full the broom keeps fetching water. The house floods, and the apprentice has no idea how to stop it. Not quite so easy anymore. Luckily, before everything goes to hell, the sorcerer returns and brings things back to normal.
In Frankenstein’s case, the master stays absent. Things really do go to hell. Yet the message is the same: there are things that are too big for us and that can easily get out of control. We can only ever play at being God, like children who dress up as adults. We deceive ourselves into believing that we have godlike power and wisdom, while in fact we don’t. And that is why sooner or later we will screw up.
But is so much caution really necessary? Whale’s Frankenstein, in the 1931 movie, clearly thinks that things only get interesting when they get dangerous. After all, “where would we be if nobody tried to find out what lies beyond” and to discover “what eternity is for example?” If we take our caution too far, there can be no science, and without science no progress. And isn’t it even our right to know things, and to live?
We’ve been condemned to ignorance and death by an unjust God or perhaps an indifferent nature. So why not fight? Why meekly accept the death penalty? Why not change the order of things? It seems we’ve got nothing to lose, even though that doesn’t seem to be what Mary Shelley believed. Although . . .
Gods Have Duties, Too!
Both in Shelley’s novel and in most of the many movie versions of Frankenstein (including I, Frankenstein) there are plenty of hints that prompt us to read the story as being about a man who commits a sacrilege by violating the natural order of things and who, as a direct consequence, unleashes a terrible evil that comes to haunt him. And that’s how people tend to remember the story. In the public imagination, Frankenstein is the guy who, driven by curiosity and ambition, creates a monster which then wreaks havoc wherever it goes.
However, what does not quite accord with this common reading is the fact that the creature actually appears to be rather nice at first. In the novel, his only fault is his ugliness, which is inexplicable since he was actually designed to be beautiful. But although the parts still are beautiful, together they form a whole that clearly is not. It is repulsive, and this repulsive appearance is all that Frankenstein ever sees when he refers to his creation as a “demoniacal corpse,” a “vile insect,” or an “abhorred devil.” Yet in truth the creature is anything but an insect or a devil. His natural impulses are good and he’s far from stupid.
After being rejected by his creator, he wanders about until he finds a safe place to hide. From his hiding place he’s able to observe a family of three, and by listening to their conversations he quickly learns the human language. After a couple of years he is able to read, and not just any stuff, but things like Plutarch’s Lives. And he can talk about philosophy and the natural sciences as if he had studied them at the university in Ingolstadt just like his creator. A monster that reads the classics and that speaks like a romantic poet does not seem to be much of a monster at all.
Boris Karloff does a much better job at being a monster, with his constant grunting, outstretched arms, stiff walk and limited mental ability, but his monster too can be rather sweet, delighting in sunshine, flowers, and even cigars. Although he’s a bit short-tempered and can be quite deadly when provoked, he is actually quite a gentle creature, more like a frightened child or animal than a born “fiend.” Whatever the “abnormal brain” that Frankenstein’s assistant mistakenly pinched did to him, it clearly hasn’t made him evil. The reason why the creature starts killing people is that he is being treated very badly by almost everyone he meets. He defends himself.
In the novel, things are a bit more complicated because he is much more human, or much more adult, than in most of the movies. The reason for his violence is a very human one: he wants to take revenge, and he executes his revenge with a coolness and determination that only a human could muster. And why? Because wherever he went, all he has ever met with is hate and abhorrence. Experience has embittered him, and he has every right to be mad. “I was benevolent and good; misery made me a fiend.” His “accursed,” “unfeeling,” “heartless” creator has abandoned him for no good reason. And he had no right to do that because a creator has a moral obligation to look after his creation.
We should not give life to a being that can think and feel and suffer, and then just leave it to fend for itself. Instead, we have a duty to make sure that it gets what it needs, not only to survive, but also to live well. And that includes, perhaps more than anything else, love. Frankenstein should have loved his creation. Instead he hated him right from the start. And that is when things began to go wrong. If he had loved him, as a father loves his child, there would have been no monster. But he didn’t. So who is the monster now, Frankenstein or his creation?
But if Frankenstein is to his creature what a father is to his child and also what God is to man, then we can read the whole story as a comment on our relation to God, and God’s failure to provide for us as he should have. If we understand ourselves as God’s (or Nature’s) children, then by denying us eternal life and instead condemning us to die and to rot in our graves, whoever
has made us has failed in his duty. “You purpose to kill me,” the creature chides his creator, “How dare you sport thus with life? Do your duty towards me, and I will do mine to you.” This is man complaining to God about the injustice of mortality. “I ought to be thy Adam, but I am rather the fallen angel, whom thou drivest from joy from no misdeed.” And that is also what happened to Adam eventually, and what will happen to each one of us. “You accuse me of murder, and yet you would, with a satisfied conscience, destroy your own creature.” Just as Frankenstein demands that his creature be good while at the same time doing his best to destroy it, or to wish that it had never come into existence, God asks us to be just and good, while at the same time condemning us to death and eternal darkness through no fault of our own.
We feel we haven’t deserved this. And that is why some of us rebel against the natural order of things, like Dr. Frankenstein. Because it’s unjust. So we are the badly mistreated creature, but we are also Dr. Frankenstein trying to fight back. We are both, and that means that Dr. Frankenstein is also the monster that he created. They are mirror images of each other. Victor Frankenstein is the “modern Prometheus,” who steals fire from the Gods to protect us and who is severely punished for it and made miserable. He is also Lucifer, the “archangel who aspired to omnipotence.” But Lucifer is also the “light-bringer,” planning to “pour a torrent of light into our dark world.” Yet Frankenstein’s creation compares himself to Lucifer when he explains his actions to his creator: the “fallen angel becomes a malignant devil.”
Monsters are made, not born. But the greatest monsters are those who make monsters. “Am I to be thought the only criminal?” the creature asks defiantly. The greatest monster is not the creature. It is not Dr. Frankenstein either. The greatest monster, it appears, is God himself.
Are Things Really That Bad?
This is one way of looking at the world. It’s the way that Frankenstein looks at it before he succeeds in his endeavor. Before the catastrophe that turns his thinking around. It may be the way, or one of the ways, that Mary Shelley, perhaps without being fully aware of it, looked at the world.
It’s also the way today’s transhumanists look at it. As the arch-transhumanist Max More puts it:
No more gods, no more faith, no more timid holding back. Let us blast out of our old forms, our ignorance, our weakness, and our mortality.
The world is bad, so let’s create another. But is that really so? Is death the greatest evil? Have we been treated unjustly? Do we really have a good reason to rebel against the natural order?
Of course, growing old is no fun. It’s not easy getting used to it. And that we will all, each and every one of us, one day, and much sooner than we would like, cease to exist is a thought that is almost incomprehensible. How can I die? Will not the world end with me? (And in a sense it does.) And whenever we try to get our heads around this, we are struck by the horror of non-existence, “the void that presents itself to the soul,” as Shelley’s Frankenstein tells us.
Yet the Greek philosopher Epicurus pointed out a long time ago that once we’re dead, we couldn’t care less. Death is no harm because we won’t be aware of it. As long as we are, death is not, and as soon as death is, we are no longer there to suffer from it. We are not scared of dying because death is an evil. Rather, death is only an evil to the extent that we are scared of it. Get rid of the fear and everything is fine.
Besides, if we look at the bigger picture, we may find that the death of the individual is actually quite useful. If people didn’t die, we would probably not even exist because nobody would have bothered to create us. In a world in which nobody dies, or at least nobody has to die, there would be little need for children. They would only increase the problem of overpopulation, and since we would have no reason to make room for the young, our children would find it very difficult to create a place for themselves in society. So a world in which people didn’t die would very likely be a world without children.
There would be no fresh eyes with which to look at the world. No sense of wonder, no surprises. There would be little change, and no progress, or at least no moral progress. When we get older we tend to become quite inflexible in our views. We know how the world works. We have settled down, not only in the world, but also in our own minds. Death allows the world to move on, to explore new avenues of being. We live only because others have died.
If Frankenstein were real and if he had succeeded in discovering the “secret of eternal life,” then we would all be pre-Victorians now with an early nineteenth-century frame of mind. Or rather, we wouldn’t exist at all. Because they would. So all things considered, the fact that people die and don’t live forever is actually quite a good thing.
But what about knowledge, and power? Should we not try to gain more control over things, and over our own lives, so that we are more able to protect ourselves and others from a world that at times can be very cruel and hostile indeed? Yes, perhaps, but how far are we willing to go with this? How far is it good for us to go? How likely is it that our aspirations will contribute to making this world a better place? And is making the world a better place really what people want when they strive for more knowledge and power?
There is such a thing as “senseless curiosity.” It is what Shelley’s Frankenstein later in the book believes he was driven by when he set out to uncover the secret of eternal life. At first he flattered himself with the thought that he’d become mankind’s greatest benefactor, their very own Prometheus. But perhaps it was all a sham. Perhaps it was just plain old curiosity, of the kind that kills the cat, without a clear purpose, just the desire to find out whether it can be done, whether we can do it, whether he can do it.
Should there really be a limit? Must we accept that we are finite creatures? Let’s go and find out. Let’s acquire knowledge, for knowledge is power, and we like power, not so much because we can do certain things with it, things that we are interested in doing, not because there is really a need to have more of it, but for its own sake.
In fact, power is felt to be so desirable that we’re willing to do almost anything to get it.
One man’s life or death were but a small price to pay for the acquirement of the knowledge which I sought, for the domination I should acquire and transmit over the elemental foes of our race.
In other words, eternal life is, paradoxically, something worth dying for, and perhaps also worth killing for, because eternal life is the acme of power. Frankenstein is well aware of the contradiction: “Who shall conceive the horrors of my secret toil as I dabbled among the unhallowed damps of the grave or tortured the living animal to animate the lifeless clay?” Life is destroyed to be created anew. But at least Dr. Frankenstein regrets his actions, although he never fully realizes to what extent he may have been motivated not by benevolence, but by sheer power hunger. His self-awareness is constrained by his need to think of himself as a fundamentally good man, one that has erred and sinned, yes, but still one who always wanted to do good.
Professor Pretorius in Bride of Frankenstein, who is yet another of Frankenstein’s alter egos, has no such scruples. He is said to be even crazier than Frankenstein, but only because he has no illusions about what he wants and why he wants it. Moral concerns hold no sway over him. He is crazy because he is so damn rational, a perfect illustration of G.K. Chesterton’s witty remark about the madman being not the one who has lost his reason, but rather the one who has lost everything but his reason. He kills without remorse to get what he wants, and what he wants is to bring about “a new world of gods and monsters” by creating a whole race of new humans that would serve him as their God. A race of naturally born slaves, play things for their all-powerful ruler.
And that’s the trouble with both knowledge and the power that springs from it. The more knowledge and power we have, as a species, the more easily can it be used against us, as individuals. The atom bomb is a powerful tool, but if you are one of those on whom it is used, you won’t feel very powerful at
all. Each new power also makes us more vulnerable. The power over life and death might appeal to you as long as you imagine that power to be in your own hands. But chances are that it is not you at all, but rather someone else who possesses it, and who wields it to make you do his will.
Mark Twain once said that to a man with a hammer everything looks like a nail. The question is, will you be the man with the hammer, or will you be the nail? Perhaps a world in which people do not have too much power is far better for most of us in the long run, for our weaknesses do also protect us from each other.
How to Be Happy
“Learn from me, if not by my precepts, at least by my example, how dangerous is the acquirement of knowledge and how much happier that man is who believes his native town to be the world, than he who aspires to become greater than his nature will allow.” This is Frankenstein’s final resumé, the lesson that he has learned from his experience and that he urges us to take to heart. Trying to become greater than our current nature will allow, so that in order to succeed we will have to change that very nature, is dangerous. But it is dangerous not so much because it might invite trouble by provoking the wrath of the gods or anything like that, but rather because we can’t be really happy when we’re constantly chasing a dream that may well turn out to be a nightmare—and that might not even be possible to realize.
We always need to ask ourselves, and reflect very carefully about, what we want and why we want it. Knowledge appears to be a good thing, but too much knowledge, or perhaps pursuing that knowledge with too much determination, may very well make our lives pretty miserable. One reason for this is that pursuing knowledge beyond certain limits might be nothing but a fool’s errant. We are somehow assuming that we can know everything, that our minds are powerful enough. But why should we assume that? We are ourselves a work of nature, and if nature is powerful enough to create something that is capable of understanding all its workings, then it must also be powerful enough to conceal things from us. There is no guarantee, and in fact it’s very unlikely, that we are actually capable of understanding more than a tiny fraction of the universe.
Frankenstein and Philosophy Page 2