There is nothing in any of the functions of man, in any of his capacities, or in any of his properly understood desires that has the slightest reference to any life but this. It is unthinkable that there should be. An organ or an organism develops in relation to a special medium, not in relation to one that--even though it exists--is not also in relation with it. This is quite an obvious truth in regard to structures, but it is not always so clearly recognized, or so carefully borne in mind, that it is equally true of every feeling and desire. For these are developed in relation to their special medium, in this case, the existence of fellow beings with their actions and reactions on each other. And man is not only a member of a social group, that much is an obvious fact; but he is a product of the group in the sense that all his characteristic human qualities have resulted from the interactions of group life. Take man out of relation to that fact, and he is an enigma, presenting fit opportunities for the wild theorizing of religious philosophers. Take him in connection with it, and his whole nature becomes susceptible of understanding in relation to the only existence he knows and desires.
The twin facts of growth and progress, upon which so much of the argument for a future life turns nowadays, have not the slightest possible reference to a life beyond the grave. They are fundamentally not even personal, but social. It is the race that grows, not the individual, he becomes more powerful precisely because the products of racial acquisition are inherited by him. Remove, if only in thought, the individual from all a.s.sociation with his fellows, strip him of all that he inherits from a.s.sociation with them, and he loses all the qualities we indicate when we speak of him as a civilized being. Remove him, in fact, from that a.s.sociation, as when a man is marooned on a desert island, and the more civilized qualities of his character begin to weaken and in time disappear. Man, as an individual, becomes more powerful with the pa.s.sing of each generation, precisely because he is thus dependent upon the life of the race. The secret of his weakness is at the same time the source of his strength. We are what we are because of the generations of men and women who lived and toiled and died before we were born. We inherit the fruits of their labours, as those who come after us will inherit the fruits of our struggles and conquests. It is thus in the life of the race that man achieves immortality. None other is possible, or conceivable. And to those whose minds are not distorted by religious teaching, and who have taken the trouble to a.n.a.lyse and understand their own mental states, it may be said that none other is even desirable.
CHAPTER XI.
EVOLUTION.
Language, we have said above, is one of the prime conditions of human greatness and progress. It is the princ.i.p.al means by which man conserves his victories over the forces of his environment, and transmits them to his descendants. But it is, nevertheless, not without its dangers, and may exert an influence fatal to exact thought. There is a sense in which language necessarily lags behind thought. For words are coined to express the ideas of those who fashion them; and as the knowledge of the next generation alters, and some modification of existing conceptions is found necessary, there is nothing but the existing array of words in which to express them. The consequence is that there are nearly always subtle shades of meaning in the words used differing from the exact meaning which the new thought is trying to express. Thought drives us to seek new or improved verbal tools, but until we get them we must go on using the old ones, with all their old implications. And by the time the new words arrive thought has made a still further advance, and the general position remains. It is an eternal chase in which the pursued is always being captured, but is never caught.
Another way in which language holds a danger is that with many words, especially when they a.s.sume the character of a formula, they tend to usurp the place of thinking. The old lady who found so much consolation in the "blessed" word Mesopotamia, is not alone in using that method of consolation. It does not meet us only in connection with religion, it is encountered over the whole field of sociology, and even of science.
A conception in science or sociology is established after a hard fight.
It is accepted generally, and thereafter takes its place as one of the many established truths. And then the danger shows itself. It is repeated as though it had some magical virtue in itself; it means nothing to very many of those who use it, they simply hand over their mental difficulties to its care, much as the penitent in the confessional hands over his moral troubles to the priest, and there the matter ends. But in such cases the words used do not express thought, they simply blind people to its absence. And not only that, but in the name of these sacred words, any number of foolish inferences are drawn and receive general a.s.sent.
A striking ill.u.s.tration of this is to be found in such a word as "Evolution." One may say of it that while it began as a formula, it continues as a fiat. Some invoke it with all the expectancy of a mediaeval magician commanding the attendance of his favourite spirits.
Others approach it with a hushed reverence that is reminiscent of a Catholic devotee before his favourite shrine. In a little more than half a century it has acquired the characteristics of the Kismet of the Mohammedan, the Beelzebub of the pious Christian, and the power of a phrase that gives inspiration to a born soldier. It is used as often to dispel doubt as it is to awaken curiosity. It may express comprehension or merely indicate vacuity. Decisions are p.r.o.nounced in its name with all the solemnity of a "Thus saith the Lord." We are not sure that even to talk about evolution in this way may not be considered wrong. For there are crowds of folk who cannot distinguish profundity from solemnity, and who mistake a long face for the sure indication of a well-stored brain. The truth here is that what a man understands thoroughly he can deal with easily; and that he laughs at a difficulty is not necessarily a sign that he fails to appreciate it, he may laugh because he has taken its measure. And why people do not laugh at such a thing as religion is partly because they have not taken its measure, partly from a perception that religion cannot stand it. Everywhere the priest maintains his hold as a consequence of the narcotizing influence of ill-understood phrases, and in this he is matched by the pseudo-philosopher whose pompous use of imperfectly appreciated formulae disguises from the crowd the mistiness of his understanding.
A glance over the various uses to which the word "Evolution" is put will well ill.u.s.trate the truth of what has been said. These make one wonder what, in the opinion of some people, evolution stands for. One of these uses of evolution is to give it a certain moral implication to which it has not the slightest claim. A certain school of Non-Theists are, in this matter, if not the greatest offenders, certainly those with the least excuse for committing the blunder. By these evolution is identified with progress, or advancement, or a gradual "levelling up" of society, and is even acclaimed as presenting a more "moral" view of the Universe than is the Theistic conception. Now, primarily, this ascription of what one may call a moral element to evolution is no more than a carrying over into science of a frame of mind that properly belongs to Theism. Quite naturally the Theist was driven to try and find some moral purpose in the Universe, and to prove that its working did not grate on our moral sense. That was quite understandable, and even legitimate. The world, from the point of view of the G.o.ddite, was G.o.d"s world, he made it; and we are ultimately compelled to judge the character of G.o.d from his workmanship. An attack on the moral character of the world is, therefore, an attack on the character of its maker. And the Theist proceeded to find a moral justification for all that G.o.d had done.
So far all is clear. But now comes a certain kind of Non-Theist. And he, always rejecting a formal Theism and subst.i.tuting evolution, proceeds to claim for his formula all that the Theist claimed for his. He also strives to show that the idea of cosmic evolution involves conceptions of n.o.bility, justice, morality, etc. There is no wonder that some Christians round on him, and tell him that he still believes in a G.o.d.
Substantially he does. That is, he carries over into his new camp the same anthropomorphic conception of the workings of nature, and uses the same pseudo-scientific reasoning that is characteristic of the Theist.
He has formally given up G.o.d, but he goes about uncomfortably burdened with his ghost.
Now, evolution is not a fiat, but a formula. It has nothing whatever to do with progress, as such, nor with morality, as such, nor with a levelling up, nor a levelling down. It is really no more than a special application of the principle of causation, and whether the working out of that principle has a good effect or a bad one, a moralizing, or a demoralizing, a progressive, or a retrogressive consequence is not "given" in the principle itself. Fundamentally, all cosmic phenomena present us with two aspects--difference and change--and that is so because it is the fundamental condition of our knowing anything at all.
But the law of evolution is no more, is nothing more serious or more profound than an attempt to express those movements of change and difference in a more or less precise formula. It aims at doing for phenomena in general exactly what a particular scientific law aims at doing for some special department. But it has no more a moral implication, or a progressive implication than has the law of gravitation or of chemical affinity. The sum of those changes that are expressed in the law of evolution may result in one or the other; it has resulted in one or the other. At one time we call its consequences moral or progressive, at another time we call them immoral or retrogressive, but these are some of the distinctions which the human mind creates for its own convenience, they have no validity in any other sense. And when we mistake these quite legitimate distinctions, made for our own convenience, and argue as though they had an actual independent existence, we are reproducing exactly the same mental confusion that keeps Theism alive.
The two aspects that difference and change resolve themselves into when expressed in an evolutionary formula are, in the inorganic world, equilibrium, and, in the organic world, adaptation. Of course, equilibrium also applies to the organic world, I merely put it this way for the purpose of clarity. Now, if we confine our attention to the world of animal forms, what we have expressed, primarily, is the fact of adaptation. If an animal is to live it must be adapted to its surroundings to at least the extent of being able to overcome or to neutralize the forces that threaten its existence. That is quite a common-place, since all it says is that to live an animal must be fit to live, but all great truths are common-places--when one sees them. Still, if there were only adaptations to consider, and if the environment to which adaptation is to be secured, remained constant, all we should have would be the deaths of those not able to live, with the survival of those more fortunately endowed. There would be nothing that we could call, even to please ourselves, either progress or its reverse. Movement up or down (both human landmarks) occurs because the environment itself undergoes a change. Either the material conditions change, or the pressure of numbers initiates a contest for survival, although more commonly one may imagine both causes in operation at the same time. But the consequence is the introduction of a new quality into the struggle for existence. It becomes a question of a greater endowment of the qualities that spell survival. And that paves the way to progress--or the reverse. But one must bear in mind that, whether the movement be in one direction or the other, it is still the same process that is at work. Evolution levels neither "up" nor "down." Up and down is as relative in biology as it is in astronomy. In nature there is neither better nor worse, neither high nor low, neither good nor bad, there are only differences, and if that had been properly appreciated by all, very few of the apologies for Theism would ever have seen the light.
There is not the slightest warranty for speaking of evolution as being a "progressive force," it is, indeed, not a force at all, but only a descriptive term on all fours with any other descriptive term as expressed in a natural law. It neither, of necessity, levels up nor levels down. In the animal world it ill.u.s.trates adaptation only, but whether that adaptation involves what we choose to call progression or retrogression is a matter of indifference. On the one hand we have aquatic life giving rise to mammalian life, and on the other hand, we have mammalian life reverting to an aquatic form of existence. In one place we have a "lower" form of life giving place to a "higher" form. In another place we can see the reverse process taking place. And the "lower" forms are often more persistent than the "higher" ones, while, as the course of epidemical and other diseases shows certain lowly forms of life may make the existence of the higher forms impossible. The Theistic attempt to disprove the mechanistic conception of nature by insisting that evolution is a law of progress, that it implies an end, and indicates a goal, is wholly fallacious. From a scientific point of view it is meaningless chatter. Science knows nothing of a plan, or an end in nature, or even progress. All these are conceptions which we humans create for our own convenience. They are so many standards of measurement, of exactly the same nature as our agreement that a certain length of s.p.a.ce shall be called a yard, or a certain quant.i.ty of liquid shall be called a pint. To think otherwise is pure anthropomorphism. It is the ghost of G.o.d imported into science.
So far, then, it is clear that the universal fact in nature is change.
The most general aspect of nature which meets us is that expressed in the law of evolution. And proceeding from the more general to the less general, in the world of living beings this change meets us in the form of adaptation to environment. But what const.i.tutes adaptation must be determined by the nature of the environment. That will determine what qualities are of value in the struggle for existence, which is not necessarily a struggle against other animals, but may be no more than the animal"s own endeavours to persist in being. It is, however, in relation to the environment that we must measure the value of qualities.
Whatever be the nature of the environment that principle remains true.
Ideally, one quality may be more desirable than another, but if it does not secure a greater degree of adaptation to the environment it brings no advantage to its possessor. It may even bring a positive disadvantage. In a thieves" kitchen the honest man is handicapped. In a circle of upright men the dishonest man is at a discount. In the existing political world a perfectly truthful man would be a parliamentary failure. In the pulpit a preacher who knew the truth about Christianity and preached it would soon be out of the Church.
Adaptation is not, as such, a question of moral goodness or badness, it is simply adaptation.
A precautionary word needs be said on the matter of environment. If we conceive the environment as made up only of the material surroundings we shall not be long before we find ourselves falling into gross error. For that conception of environment will only hold of the very lowest organisms. A little higher, and the nature of the organism begins to have a modifying effect on the material environment, and when we come to animals living in groups the environment of the individual animal becomes partly the habits and instincts of the other animals with which it lives. Finally, when we reach man this transformation of the nature of the environment becomes greatest. Here it is not merely the existence of other members of the same species, with all their developed feelings and ideas to which each must become adapted to live, but in virtue of what we have described above as the social medium, certain "thought forms" such as inst.i.tutions, conceptions of right and wrong, ideals of duty, loyalty, the relation of one human group to other human groups, not merely those that are now living, but also those that are dead, are all part of the environment to which adjustment must be made. And in the higher stages of social life these aspects of the environment become of even greater consequence than the facts of a climatic, geographic, or geologic nature. In other words, the environment which exerts a predominating influence on civilized mankind is an environment that has been very largely created by social life and growth.
If we keep these two considerations firmly in mind we shall be well guarded against a whole host of fallacies and false a.n.a.logies that are placed before us as though they were unquestioned and unquestionable truths. There is, for instance, the misreading of evolution which a.s.serts that inasmuch as what is called moral progress takes place, therefore evolution involves a moral purpose. We find this view put forward not only by avowed Theists, but by those who, while formally disavowing Theism, appear to have imported into ethics all the false sentiment and fallacious reasoning that formerly did duty in bolstering up the idea of G.o.d. Evolution, as such, is no more concerned with an ideal morality than it is concerned with the development of an ideal apple dumpling. In the universal process morality is no more than a special ill.u.s.tration of the principle of adaptation. The morality of man is a summary of the relations between human beings that must be maintained if the two-fold end of racial preservation and individual development are to be secured. Fundamentally morality is the formulation in either theory or practice of rules or actions that make group-life possible. And the man who sees in the existence or growth of morality proof of a "plan" or an "end" is on all fours with the mentality of the curate who saw the hand of Providence in the fact that death came at the end of life instead of in the middle of it. What we are dealing with here is the fact of adaptation, although in the case of the human group the traditions and customs and ideals of the group form a very important part of the environment to which adaptation must be made and have, therefore, a distinct survival value. The moral mystery-monger is only a shade less objectionable than the religious mystery-monger, of whom he is the ethical equivalent.
A right conception of the nature of environment and the meaning of evolution will also protect us against a fallacy that is met with in connection with social growth. Human nature, we are often told, is always the same. To secure a desired reform, we are a.s.sured, you must first of all change human nature, and the a.s.sumption is that as human nature cannot be changed the proposed reform is quite impossible.
Now there is a sense in which human nature is the same, generation after generation. But there is another sense in which human nature is undergoing constant alteration, and, indeed, it is one of the outstanding features of social life that it should be so. So far as can be seen there exists no difference between the fundamental capacities possessed by man during at least the historic period. There are differences in people between the relative strengths of the various capacities, but that is all. An ancient a.s.syrian possessed all the capacities of a modern Englishman, and in the main one would feel inclined to say the same of them in their quant.i.tative aspect as well as in their qualitative one. For when one looks at the matter closely it is seen that the main difference between the ancient and the modern man is in expression. Civilization does not so much change the man so much as it gives a new direction to the existing qualities. Whether particular qualities are expressed in an ideally good direction or the reverse depends upon the environment to which they react.
To take an example. The fundamental evil of war in a modern state is that it expends energy in a harmful direction. But war itself, the expression of the war-like character, is the outcome of pugnacity and the love of adventure without which human nature would be decidedly the poorer, and would be comparatively ineffective. It is fundamentally an expression of these qualities that lead to the quite healthy taste for exploration, discovery, and in intellectual pursuits to that contest of ideas which lies at the root of most of our progress. And what war means in the modern State is that the love of compet.i.tion and adventure, the pugnacity which leads a man to fight in defence of a right or to redress a wrong, and without which human nature would be a poor thing, are expended in the way of sheer destruction instead of through channels of adventure and healthy intellectual contest. Sympathies are narrowed instead of widened, and hatred of the stranger and the outsider, of which a growing number of people in a civilized country are becoming ashamed, a.s.sumes the rank of a virtue. In other words, a state of war creates an environment--fortunately for only a brief period--which gives a survival value to such expressions of human capacity as indicate a reversion to a lower state of culture.
We may put the matter thus. While conduct is a function of the organism, and while the _kind_ of reaction is determined by structure, the _form_ taken by the reaction is a matter of response to environmental influences. It is this fact which explains why the capacities of man remain fairly constant, while there is a continuous redirecting of these capacities into new channels suitable to a developing social life.
We are only outlining here a view of evolution that would require a volume to discuss and ill.u.s.trate adequately, but enough has been said to indicate the enormous importance of the educative power of the environment. We cannot alter the capacities of the individual for they are a natural endowment. But we can, in virtue of an increased emphasis, determine whether they shall be expressed in this or that direction. The love of adventure may, for example, be exhausted in the pursuit of some piratical enterprise, or it may be guided into channels of some useful form of social effort. It lies with society itself to see that the environment is such as to exercise a determining influence with regard to expressions of activity that are beneficial to the whole of the group.
To sum up. Evolution is no more than a formula that expresses the way in which a moving balance of forces is brought about by purely mechanical means. So far as animal life is concerned this balance is expressed by the phrase "adaptation to environment." But in human society the environment is in a growing measure made up of ideas, customs, traditions, ideals, and beliefs; in a word, of factors which are themselves products of human activities. And it is for this reason that the game of civilization is very largely in our own hands. If we maintain an environment in which it is either costly or dangerous to be honest and fearless in the expression of opinion, we shall be doing our best to develop mental cowardice and hypocrisy. If we bring up the young with the successful soldier or money-maker before them as examples, while we continue to treat the scientist as a crank, and the reformer as a dangerous criminal, we shall be continuing the policy of forcing the expression of human capacity on a lower level than would otherwise be the case. If we encourage the dominance of a religion which while making a profession of disinterested loftiness continues to irradiate a narrow egotism and a pessimistic view of life, we are doing our best to perpetuate an environment which emphasizes only the poorer aspects of human motive. Two centuries of ceaseless scientific activity have taught us something of the rules of the game which we are all playing with nature whether we will or no. To-day we have a good many of the winning cards in our hands, if we will only learn to play them wisely. It is not correct to say that evolution necessarily involves progress, but it does indicate that wisdom and foresight may so control the social forces as to turn that ceaseless change which is indicated by the law of evolution into channels that make for happiness and prosperity.
CHAPTER XII.
DARWINISM AND DESIGN.
The influence of the hypothesis of evolution on religion was not long in making itself felt. Professor Huxley explained the rapid success of Darwinism by saying that the scientific world was ready for it. And much the same thing may be said of the better representatives of the intellectual world with regard to the bearing of evolution on religion.
In many directions the cultivated mind had for more than half a century been getting familiar with the general conception of growth in human life and thought. Where earlier generations had seen no more than a pattern to unravel there had developed a conviction that there was a history to trace and to understand. Distant parts of the world had been brought together during the seventeenth and the eighteenth centuries, readers and students were getting familiarized with the ma.s.s of customs and religious ideas that were possessed by these peoples, and it was perceived that beneath the bewildering variety of man"s mental output there were certain features which they had in common, and which might hold in solution some common principle or principles.
This common principle was found in the conception of evolution. It was the one thing which, if true, and apart from the impossible idea of a revelation, nicely graduated to the capacities of different races, offered an explanation of the religions of the world in terms more satisfactory than those of deliberate invention or imposture. Once it was accepted, if only as an instrument of investigation, its use was soon justified. And the thorough-going nature of the conquest achieved is in no wise more clearly manifested than in the fact that the conception of growth is, to-day, not merely an accepted principle with scientific investigators, it has sunk deeply into all our literature and forms an unconscious part of popular thought.
One aspect of the influence of evolution on religious ideas has already been noted. It made the religious idea but one of the many forms that were a.s.sumed by man"s attempt to reduce his experience of the world to something like an orderly theory. But that carried with it, for religion, the danger of reducing it to no more than one of the many theories of things which man forms, with the prospect of its rejection as a better knowledge of the world develops. Evolution certainly divested religion of any authority save such as it might contain in itself, and that is a position a religious mind can never contemplate with equanimity.
But so far as the theory of Darwinism is concerned it exerted a marked and rapid influence on the popular religious theory of design in nature.
This is one of the oldest arguments in favour of a reasoned belief in G.o.d, and it is the one which was, and is still in one form or another, held in the greatest popular esteem. To the popular mind--and religion in a civilized country is not seriously concerned about its failing grip on the cultured intelligence so long as it keeps control of the ordinary man and woman--to the popular mind the argument from design appealed with peculiar force. Anyone is capable of admiring the wonders of nature, and in the earlier developments of popular science the marvels of plant and animal structures served only to deepen the Theist"s admiration of the "divine wisdom." The examples of complexity of structure, of the interdependence of parts, and of the thousand and one cunning devices by which animal life maintains itself in the face of a hostile environment were there for all to see and admire. And when man compared these with his own conscious attempts to adapt means to ends, there seemed as strong proof here as anywhere of some scheming intelligence behind the natural process.
But the strength of the case was more apparent than real. It was weakest at the very point where it should have been strongest. In the case of a human product we know the purpose and can measure the extent of its realization in the nature of the result. In the case of a natural product we have no means of knowing what the purpose was, or even if any purpose at all lies behind the product. The important element in the argument from design--that of purpose--is thus pure a.s.sumption. In the case of human productions we argue from purpose to production. In the case of a natural object we are arguing from production to an a.s.sumed purpose. The a.n.a.logy breaks down just where it should be strongest and clearest.
Now it is undeniable that to a very large number of the more thoughtful the old form of the argument from design received its death blow from the Darwinian doctrine of natural selection. In the light of this theory there was no greater need to argue that intelligence was necessary to produce animal adaptations than there was to a.s.sume intelligence for the sifting of sand by the wind. As the lighter grains are carried farthest because they are lightest, so natural selection, operating upon organic variations, favoured the better adapted specimens by killing off the less favoured ones. The fittest is not created, it survives. The world is not what it is because the animal is what it is, the animal is what it is because the world is as it is. It cannot be any different and live--a truth demonstrated by the destruction of myriads of animal forms, and by the disappearance of whole species. The case was so plain, the evidence so conclusive, that the clearer headed religionists dropped the old form of the argument from design as no longer tenable.
But the gentleman who exchanged the errors of the Church of Rome for those of the Church of England is always with us. And the believer in deity having dropped the argument from design in one form immediately proceeded to revive it in another. This was, perhaps, inevitable. After all, man lives in this world, and if proof of the existence of deity is to be gathered from his works, it must be derived from the world we know. So design _must_ be found somewhere, and it must be found here.
Only one chance was left. The general hypothesis of evolution--either Darwinism alone, or Darwinism plus other factors--explained the development of animal life. But that was _within_ the natural process.
What, then, of the process as a whole? If the hand of G.o.d could not be seen in the particular adaptations of animal life, might it not be that the whole of the process, in virtue of which these particular adaptations occurred, might be the expression of the divine intelligence? G.o.d did not create the particular parts directly, but may he not have created the whole, leaving it for the forces he had set in motion to work out his "plan." The suggestion was attractive. It relieved religion from resting its case in a region where proof and disproof are possible, and removed it to a region where they are difficult, if not impossible. So, as it was not possible to uphold the old teleology, one began to hear a great deal of the "wider teleology,"
which meant that the Theist was thinking vaguely when he imagined he was thinking comprehensively, and that, because he had reached a region where the laws of logic could not be applied, he concluded that he had achieved demonstration. And, indeed, when one gets outside the region of verification there is nothing to stop one theorizing--save a dose of common-sense and a gracious gift of humour.
In another work (_Theism or Atheism_) I have dealt at length with the argument from design. At present my aim is to take the presentation of this "wider teleology" as given by a well-known writer on philosophical subjects, Mr. F. C. S. Schiller, in a volume published a few years ago ent.i.tled _Humanism: Philosophical Essays_. And in doing so, it is certain that the theologian will lose nothing by leaving himself in the hands of so able a representative.
Mr. Schiller naturally accepts Darwinism as at least an important factor in organic evolution, but he does not believe that it excludes design, and he does believe that "our att.i.tude towards life will be very different, according as we believe it to be inspired and guided by intelligence or hold it to be the fortuitous product of blind mechanisms, whose working our helpless human intelligence can observe, but cannot control."
Now within its scope Darwinism certainly does exclude design, and even though the forces represented by natural selection may be directed towards the end produced, yet so far as the play of these forces is concerned they are really self-directing, or self-contained. The argument really seems to be just mere theology masquerading as philosophy. Theories do play some part in the determination of the individual att.i.tude towards life, but they do not play the important part that Mr. Schiller a.s.sumes they play. It is easily observable that the same theory of life held by a Christian in England and by another Christian in Asia Minor has, so far as it affects conduct, different results. And if it be said that even though the results be different they are still there, the reply is that they differ because the facts of life compel an adjustment in terms of the general environment. Mr.
Schiller admits that the "prevalent conduct and that adapted to the conditions of life must coincide," and the admission is fatal to his position. The truth of the matter is that the conditions of life being what they are, and the consequences of conduct being also what they are, speculative theories of life cannot, in the nature of the case, affect life beyond a certain point; that is, if life is to continue. That is why in the history of belief religious teachings have sooner or later to accommodate themselves to persistent facts.
Mr. Schiller brings forward two arguments in favour of reconciling Darwinism and Design, both of them ingenious, but neither of them conclusive. With both of these I will deal later; but it is first necessary to notice one or two of his arguments against a non-Theistic Darwinism. The denial of the argument from design, he says, leads farther than most people imagine:--
A complete denial of design in nature must deny the efficacy of all intelligence as such. A consistently mechanical view has to regard all intelligence as otiose, as an "epi-phenomenal by-product" or fifth wheel to the cart, in the absence of which the given results would no less have occurred. And so, if this view were the truth, we should have to renounce all effort to direct our fated and ill-fated course down the stream of time. Our consciousness would be an unmeaning accident.
A complete reply to this would involve an examination of the meaning that is and ought to be attached to "intelligence," and that is too lengthy an enquiry to be attempted here. It is, perhaps, enough to point out that Mr. Schiller"s argument clearly moves on the a.s.sumption that intelligence is a _thing_ or a quality which exists, so to speak, in its own right and which interferes with the course of events as something from without. It is quite probable that he would repudiate this construction being placed on his words, but if he does not mean that, then I fail to see what he does mean, or what force there is in his argument. And it is enough for my purpose to point out that "intelligence" or mind is not a thing, but a relation. It a.s.serts of a certain cla.s.s of actions exactly what "gravitation" a.s.serts of a certain cla.s.s of motion, and "thingness" is no more a.s.serted in the one case than it is in the other.
Intelligence, as a name given to a special cla.s.s of facts or actions, remains, whatever view we take of its nature, and it is puzzling to see why the denial of extra natural intelligence--that is, intelligence separated from all the conditions under which we know the phenomenon of intelligence--should be taken as involving the denial of the existence of intelligence as we know it. Intelligence as connoting purposive action remains as much a fact as gravity or chemical attraction, and continues valid concerning the phenomena it is intended to cover. All that the evolutionist is committed to is the statement that it is as much a product of evolution as is the shape or colouring of animals. It is not at all a question of self-dependence. Every force in nature must be taken for what it is worth, intelligence among them. Why, then, does the view that intelligence is both a product of evolution and a cause of another phase of evolution land us in self-contradiction, or make the existence of itself meaningless? The truth is that intelligence determines results exactly as every other force in nature determines results, by acting as a link in an unending sequential chain. And the question as to what intelligence is _per se_ is as meaningless as what gravitation is _per se_. These are names which we give to groups of phenomena displaying particular and differential characteristics, and their purpose is served when they enable us to cognize and recognize these phenomena and to give them their place and describe their function in the series of changes that make up our world.
Mr. Schiller"s reply to this line of criticism is the familiar one that it reduces human beings to automata. He says:--