But so far as this argument presupposes theism, it cannot be made to support or even confirm theism; if then we wish to make it available for apologetic purposes in regard to those whose doubt is more deep-seated, we must now inquire whether, prescinding from divine governance and from finality in nature, the adaptability of a belief (say, in G.o.d, or in future retribution) to the needs of mankind, can be considered in any way as a proof of its truth; whether that argument can find any deeper mental basis than theism; whether it can be rested on anything which in the order of our thought is prior to theism so as to support or at least to confirm theism itself.
Our present endeavour is to show that though this argument rests more easily and securely on theism, yet it need not rest upon it; but springs, co-ordinately with theism, from _any_ conception of the world that saves us from mental and moral chaos. Hence it confirms theism and is confirmed by theism; but each is strictly independent of the other and rests on a conception prior to both; they diverge from one and the same root and then intertwine and support one another.
By prescinding from theism I do not mean to exclude or deny it; for it is, as I have just said, bound up with the same conception from which the "argument from adaptability" is drawn. I only mean that I do not need to build upon it as on a prior conception; that I can put it aside.
Indeed, of these two off-shoots, theism is less near to the common root, as will appear later.
Our limited mind cannot take in at once all the consequences or presuppositions of a thought; for this would be to know everything; but as with our outward eye we take in the circle of the horizon bit by bit, so with our mind when we turn to one aspect of an idea we lose sight of another. Hence in studying some complex organism or mechanism I may be clear about the bearing of any part on its immediately neighbouring parts, and yet may have no present notion of the whole; or may prescind entirely from the question of its origin or its purpose. Thus our thoughts are always unfinished and frayed round the edges, and we do not know how much they involve and drag along with them. We can think of the mechanism, and the organism, and the design, without thinking of the mechanist, or the organizer, or the designer; and so in all cases where two ideas are connected without being actually correlative. What is commonly called a philosophical proof consists simply in showing us the implications of some part of the general conception of things that we already hold. It is to force us either to loosen our hold on that part or else to admit all that it entails by way of consequences or presuppositions; and so to bring our thoughts into consistency one way or the other. But until something sets our mind in motion it can rest very comfortably in partial conceptions, without following them out to their results.
Now as we can understand a mechanism to the extent of seeing the bearing of part upon part, and even of all the parts upon the work it does, without going on to think about the designer or his design; and without explicitly considering it as designed; so we can and do think of the world and recognize order in it, and see the bearing of part upon part without going back to G.o.d or forward to G.o.d"s purposes. Indeed, so far as we use the argument from design to prove the existence of G.o.d, it means that we first apprehend this order and regular sequence of events, and then, as a second and distinct step, put it down to design. For although G.o.d is the prior cause of design and of all creation, yet design and creation is the prior cause of our knowing G.o.d, The conception of a rational and moral world leads us to the conception of a rational and moral origin, i.e., to theism. Further, it is plain that this same order and regularity is recognized by many who refuse to see design in it, and who invent other hypotheses to account for it; and of one of these hypotheses we shall presently speak at length.
Now, if I take any single organism and study it carefully, simply as a biologist or physiologist, I shall recognize in it certain regularities of structure and function and development, upon which I can found various arguments and predictions. I can argue from its general characteristics, to the nature of its environment and habits and modes of life; or from its earlier stages, to what it will be when more fully developed; and these arguments will be quite unaffected by any theory I may hold as to the origin of these changes, and as to the causes of these adaptations. The order and regularity on which my predictions are based is an admitted fact. Theism or materialism are only theories by which that fact is explained. Now, for mind in the abstract, theism is really as much a presupposition of that fact, as the predicted truth is a consequence of it. Both are logically connected with it, and yet neither is derived from it through the other.
If, however, we cannot thus observe and calculate on certain regularities and tendencies in the world as we know it, then, not only is the appearance of design and finality an illusion, not only is that particular argument for theism cut away, but with it goes all scientific certainty, all that stands between us and the most hopeless mental and moral scepticism.
It is not our immediate concern to prove the value of the "argument from adaptability," but simply to show that it is logically (though not really) unaffected by the question of theism and finality and design. As long as we admit those same effects and consequences of which design is one explanation, but of which others are _prima facie_ conceivable; as long as we hold that the world works on the whole as though it were designed; that the present antic.i.p.ates and prepares for the future; that the future and absent can be predicted from the present, so long do we hold all upon which the "argument of adaptability" is strictly based.
And indeed, as has been said, if once it be admitted that the general progressive tendency on the part of living things is towards a greater harmony and correspondence with surrounding reality, then that argument is a more immediate inference from the existence of an orderly world, than is theism.
Though both are strictly independent deductions from the same principle (i.e., from an orderly world), yet theism and the argument from adaptability when once deduced, confirm one another. For it is not hard to show that theism is better adapted to man"s higher needs, than atheism or polytheism or pantheism; while if theism be once granted, then, as we said in the last section, the argument from adaptability is much more easily established.
There have been at various times several philosophies or attempted explanations of the world, which have either denied or prescinded from theism and finality. These two conceptions may be considered as one; for by finality we mean the intelligent direction of means towards a preconceived end; and therefore to admit a pervading finality, is to imply a theistic origin and government of the universe.
Perhaps, the best and most finished attempt to explain the world independently of finality is the philosophy of Evolution, so widely popularized in our own day; and since it is in the region of organic existence, that finalism looks for its chief basis, it is especially by Darwinistic Evolution that its force is supposed to be destroyed.
Any form of "monism" gets rid of finality more easily than does any form of dualism; and again, any form of materialism, more easily than idealism; and therefore as monistic and materialistic (at least in some sense of the term), popular Evolutionism is the best plea for non-finalist philosophy. We propose therefore briefly to examine this philosophy, so far as it claims to be such, and to see whether it in any way touches the validity of the argument from adaptability.
Evolution may be considered both as an empirical fact and as an aetiological theory or philosophy. Considered as a fact, it is the statement of observed processes, and belongs to positive science like the observed courses of the planets, or any other observed regularities and uniformities. Science professes to have found everywhere as far as its experience has extended--in astronomy, geology, physiology, biology, psychology, ethics, sociology--a uniform process of change from the simple to the complex, from the indefinite and unstable to the stable and definite; and with this statement, so far as it can be verified, the positivist should rest content, seeking no theory, and drawing no generalization. But, the mind cannot hold together such collected facts without some binding theory, nor even observe a single fact without some preconception to give meaning to its suggested outlines: for what we really get from our senses bears but a slight ratio to what we fill in with our mind. Hence, answering to this supposed, but far from proven, universality of Evolution as a fact,[4] we have a certain philosophy of Evolution which takes us out of the sphere of facts into that of hypotheses and generalizations, and tries to give meaning and unity to the positive information that physical science has collected and cla.s.sified; to finish, as it were, the suggested curves; to fill up the lacunae of observation; to extend to the whole world what is known of the part; and perhaps to erect into a cause what is only an orderly statement of facts. Undoubtedly it is this last fallacy that makes it more easy for evolutionists to dispense with or ignore finality. Law in its first sense is an expression of effectual human will. Call Evolution a law and the popular mind will soon vaguely conceive it as a rule or uniformity resulting from some kind of unconscious will-power at the back of everything; and this Will-Power stops the gap created in our thought by the exclusion of theism and finality. This confusion is furthered still more by not distinguishing between the cause of a fact and the cause of our knowledge of the fact. If I act in willing conformity with the civil law, I also act in obedience to it, in some way coerced by its authority and its sanctions. The law is really a cause of my action; because it represents the fixed will and effectual power of the ruler. But when this conception and name is transferred by a.n.a.logy to physical uniformities of action, an event which conforms to the observed law or regularity of sequence, is not really caused by the law unless we suppose that law to be representative of something equivalent to a fixed will from which it originates. Yet we say loosely, such an event happens _in consequence of_ the law of attraction; meaning only, _in conformity with_ the law, so as to verify the law, to follow from it logically. Thus again the law comes to be mistaken for an effectual power of some kind, whereas it is merely a sort of regularity that might result either from an intelligent will or from something equivalent. But in thus adroitly slipping-in the conception of a governing force or tendency, or even in openly a.s.serting it, with Schopenhauer or Hartmann, and in explaining the graduated resemblances of species by the origin of one from the other, and in extending this mode of Evolution in all directions from the known to the unknown so as to make it pervade the universe, we at once cease to be faithful positivists and, becoming philosophers, must submit to philosophic criticism, since these problems cannot be settled merely by an appeal to facts. Thus when Professor Mivart speaks of Evolution as "the continuous progress of the material universe by the unfolding of latent potentialities in harmony with a preordained end," the latent potentialities, the preordained end, the procession of one species from another, the extension of this law to every difference of time and place--all are matters of hypothesis or intuition; but by no means of exterior observation.
The most that observation gives us is the very imperfect suggestion of the track that such a movement would have left behind it, not unlike the sc.r.a.ps that boys litter along the road in a paper-chase. Similarly, if in the case of organic Evolution we deny all latent potentialities and preordained ends and throw the whole burden on accidental variations and natural selection; if we regard the whole process as no more intelligent or designed than that by which water seeks and finds its own level; yet as in the case of water we must perforce introduce "a gravitating tendency," so in the case of living organisms a "persisting" or "struggling tendency," as an hypothesis to give unity to our facts or to account for their uniformity. But these tendencies are as little matter of observation as the aforesaid latent potentialities or preordained ends. In fine, Evolution, whatever form it take, gets rid of theism and finality only by slipping into their place some tendency or indefinable power which it considers adequate to account for the facts to be explained.
Let us now see if there be room in this philosophy for our argument from adaptability, and whether it will allow us to infer that because belief in theism and in future retribution are beliefs postulated by our higher moral aspirations, therefore they answer to reality more or less approximately; whether, in short, under certain conditions (specified in our last essay) the wish to believe may be a valid reason for believing.
Now Evolution as a philosophy or explanatory hypothesis owes its popularity to its apparent simplicity. Wrapped in its wordy envelope, the notion as formulated by Spencer needs no subtilty of apprehension, but only a dictionary. Nor is the Darwinian theory of Natural Selection more difficult.
Other things equal, the simpler hypothesis is to be preferred to the less simple where no proof can be had of either. But none the less, the simpler may be false and the other true. Cheapness is no proof of goodness. We are naturally impatient of troublesome and complex theories; but what we gain in the simplicity of an hypothesis, we commonly lose in the difficulty of getting the facts to square with it.
It is a simple theory that circular motion is the most perfect, and that the planets being the most perfect bodies must move with the most perfect motion; but so many epicycles must be introduced to explain apparent exceptions that the modern astronomical hypothesis, however more complex in statement, is on the whole welcomed as a simplification.
So we are disposed to think it is with regard to the popular form of Evolutionism. Its simplicity in statement is more than cancelled by its difficulty in application; and at last we are driven to conceive it in a form which at once deprives it of its t.i.tle to popularity. So far as it is simple it is fallacious and proves incoherent on closer inspection, when we try to translate its terms into clear and distinct ideas; but when we get it into intelligible form it is no simpler than the theistic hypothesis which it wants to displace, except inasmuch as it prescinds from the question of origin and last end. But in this, its only intelligible form, it leaves the argument from adaptability intact, and even requires theism as its rational complement.
This is what we must now endeavour to show. We cannot ill.u.s.trate our contention better than from the popular simplification of Ethics introduced by Bentham. Taking pleasure as a simple and ultimate notion he affirms that our conduct is always determined by a balance of pleasure on one side or the other. The problem of practical ethics is to construct a calculus of pleasures, a sort of ready-reckoner whereby men may be able to invest in the most profitable course of action. "When we have a hedonistic calculus with its senior wranglers," says Mr. Bain, "we shall begin to know whether society admits of being properly reconstructed." [5] It is a.s.sumed that pleasures differ only in quant.i.ty, i.e., in intensity, extent, and duration, just as warmth does, which may be of high or low temperature; diffused over a greater or less extent of body; and that, for a shorter or a longer time. On this a.s.sumption pleasure is every bit as mathematically measurable as is warmth, the whole difficulty being due to its subjective and therefore inaccessible nature. Simple in statement, this theory proves in application infinitely complex, and indeed on closer inspection breaks up into a mere verbal fallacy--as Dr. Martineau, amongst others, has shown in his _Types of Ethical Theory_. For "pleasure," though one simple word, has an endless variety of meanings, not indeed wholly disconnected, but bound together only by a certain kind of a.n.a.logy. The eye, the ear, the palate, the mind, the heart, have each their proper pleasure; which is nothing else than the resultant of their perfect operation in response to the stimulus of some all-satisfying object--a fact which may be expressed differently by different philosophies, but with substantial ident.i.ty of meaning. But not till we find some common measure for sound and colour and flavour and thought and affection, will it be possible to compare in any hedonistic scales the pleasures they produce. Yet colour is to the eye what music is to the ear; and therefore the one word pleasure is used not unreasonably of both.
Quite similar seems to us the fallacy to which Evolution owes its seeming simplicity and its popularity. The word "existence" or "life"
(which is the existence of organic beings, about which we are chiefly concerned), is taken as having one h.o.m.ogeneous meaning, like "heat" or "warmth;" the only difference being quant.i.tative--a difference of intensity, of breadth, of duration; not a difference of kind such as would destroy all common measure. Life is something which we predicate of the most diversely organized beings, and therefore would seem to be something the same in all, which they secure in a diversity of ways.
Thus Darwin defines the general good or welfare which should be the aim of our conduct as "the rearing of the greatest number of individuals in full health and vigour with all their faculties perfect;" upon which Mr.
Sidgwick remarks[6] with justice: "Such a reduction of the notion of "well-being" to "being" (actual and potential) would be a most important contribution from the doctrine of Evolution to ethical science. But it at least conflicts in a very startling manner with those ordinary notions of progress and development" in which "it is always implied that certain forms of life are qualitatively superior to others, independently of the number of individuals, present or future, in which each form is realized.... And if we confine ourselves to human beings, to whom alone the practical side of the doctrine applies, is it not too paradoxical to a.s.sert that "rising in the scale of existence" means no more than "developing the capacity to exist"? A greater degree of fertility would thus become an excellence outweighing the finest moral and intellectual endowments; and some semi-barbarous races must be held to have attained the end of human existence more than some of the pioneers and patterns of civilization." Nor is it only in the region of ethics but in every region that this false simplification is fertile in paradoxes; and yet if it be disowned, the charm to which Evolution owes its popularity is gone.
It would be indeed a short cut to knowledge if we might believe life to be, as this theory imagines it, a simple, self-diffusing force with an irrepressible tendency to spread itself in all directions, like fire in a prairie. True we should not have altogether got rid of innate tendencies, but we should have reduced them to one, namely, to the struggling, or persisting, or self-a.s.serting tendency; a simplification like that offered by the matter-and-force theory of Buchner.
This flame of life once kindled (we are told) endeavours to subdue all things to itself, and all that we find in the way of variety of organic structure and function has been shaped and determined by its struggle--much as a river channels a way for its waters in virtue of its own onward force, checked and determined by the nature of the obstacles it has to encounter. Every organism is related to life as the candlestick to the candle; it is simply a device for supporting and spreading as much life as is possible with the surrounding conditions.
Often, when conditions are favourable, the simplest contrivance will be more effectual, more life-producing than the most complex in less favourable conditions. Where food is not present the animal that can move about in search of it will survive, and the stationary animal perish; and likewise those that can escape their foes will live down those rooted in one spot. And if to motion we add perception and intelligence, and a.s.sociative instincts and the rest, we increase the appliances for dealing with difficulties; and therewith the means of survival when such difficulties exist. Still, in the hypothesis we are dealing with, all these contrivances--movement, consciousness, intelligence, will, society--are distinct from life and ministerial to it; they are instruments by which it is preserved, increased, and multiplied--like those contrivances by which heat or electricity is generated, sustained, and transmitted; with this difference, that no one has designed these life-machines, but they are simply the result of life"s innate tendency to struggle and spread. A great deal of the form and movement of the inorganic world is due simply to the stress of gravitation and not to design, and so we are asked to believe that the human and every other organism has been shaped and quickened by the action of as blind a power; that it is in some sense a casual result.
Now if seeing and hearing and thinking do not const.i.tute life, but are only chance discoveries helpful to life; if we do not live in order to eat and to see and to think, but only think, see, and eat in order to live, we ask ourselves, what then is this life which is none of these things and to which they are all subordinate? And when once we begin subtracting those functions which minister to life and which life has selected for its own service, we find there is absolutely nothing left to serve. Taking the very earliest forms, if we subtract movement, nutrition, growth, generation, we find there is nothing over called "life" distinct from these. This is the first and fundamental incoherence of the theory; life has simply no meaning apart from those functions which we speak of as ministering to life; unless we mean by life the mere cohering together of the bodily organism--an end more effectually secured without any such complex apparatus, by a stone or by an elementary atom.
If existence in that sense, be the force or principle whose persistence and self-a.s.sertion is the cause of all evolution, it is impossible to conceive how primordial atoms, which are a.s.sumed to be indestructible and constant in quant.i.ty, should trouble themselves to struggle at all; since the amount of that kind of existence can neither be lessened nor increased. And as motion is also a.s.sumed to be a constant quant.i.ty, it is plain that what struggles to be and to multiply, must be some special collocation and grouping of atoms with some correspondingly particular determination of motion, called "life;" but what "life" is, apart from the means it is supposed to have selected for itself, does not appear.
Another difficulty attendant on this false simplification is the complete subversion of that scale of dignity or excellence upon which we range the various kinds of living creatures, putting ourselves at the top--not merely in obedience to a pardonable vanity, but, as has. .h.i.therto been supposed, in obedience to a trustworthy intuition which, without attempting to apply a common measure to things incommensurable, judges life to be higher than death; consciousness than unconsciousness; mind than mere sensation; and in general, what includes and surpa.s.ses, than what is included and surpa.s.sed. We see that the organic world presupposes the ministry of the inorganic; and the animal world, that of the plant world; and that the human world depends on the ministry of all three; and our whole conception of this world as "cosmos" is simply the filling in of this hierarchic framework. Yet this old structure falls to pieces under the new simplification. If "life" (as vaguely conceived) be the first beginning and the last end (or rather result) of the whole process of evolution, if it be the _summum bonum_, then the "highest"
creature means, the most life-producing.
Now if we put "money" instead of "life," and begin to cla.s.sify men by this standard, we see how it inverts the old-world ideas of social hierarchy. True it is, the man of letters or of high artistic gifts can produce a certain amount of money, but has little chance against the inventor of a new soap or a patent pill. Honesty at once becomes the worst policy, and a thousand other maxims have to be reformed. Yet this is a trifling _boule-vers.e.m.e.nt_ compared with that which would have to be introduced into our scientific cla.s.sification were "life-productivity" (in the vague) taken as the criterion of excellence.
For we cannot any longer determine the rank of an animal by its organic complexity, since, _ceteris paribus_, this is a defect rather than otherwise.
To secure life more simply is better than to secure the same amount by means of complex apparatus. Of course when the favouring conditions are altered, then any apparatus that makes life still possible is an advantage; but till that crisis arises it is only an enc.u.mbrance. When life can be secured only at the cost of greater labour and exertion and cunning, it is well to be capable of these things, but surely those animals are more to be envied that have no need of these things. It is only on the hypothesis of an unkindly environment that complexity of organization is an excellence.
Furthermore, although these accidental variations allow certain creatures to survive in crises of difficulty, yet they also make the conditions of their survival more complicated and hard to secure. All that differentiates man from an amoeba has enabled him to get safe through certain straits where the lower forms of life were left behind to perish; but it has also made it impossible for him to live in the simpler conditions he has escaped from; like a parvenu whose luxurious habits have gradually created a number of new necessities for him, which make a return to his original poverty and hardships quite impracticable.
If the development of lungs has allowed animals to come out of the water into the air, it has also prevented their going back again. Furthermore, a considerable amount of vital energy is consumed in the production, support, and repair of all this supplementary, life-preserving apparatus; just as, much of the national wealth for whose protection they exist is absorbed by a standing army and other military preparations. And in fact of two countries otherwise equal in wealth, that is surely the better off which has no need of being thus armed up to the teeth. Thus man"s superior organization may be compared to the overcoat and umbrella with which one sets out on a threatening morning; very desirable should it rain, but a great nuisance should it clear up.
It seems, then, that the highest organism is that which produces or secures the greatest quant.i.ty of life in the simplest manner, and at the cost of the least complexity of structure and function; while the lowest is that which yields the least quant.i.ty at the greatest cost; and between these two extremes organisms will be ranked by the ratio of their complexity to their life-productivity--life being measured mathematically (as something h.o.m.ogeneous) by its vigour, by its duration, and by the amount of matter animated, whether in the individual or in its progeny. It is obvious how, at this rate, our zoological hierarchy is turned topsy-turvy; and how difficult it will be to show that man is a better life-machine than, say, a mud-turtle with its centuries of vital existence.
It would be a monstrous allegation to say that any evolutionist would defend these conclusions in all their crudity; but is only by thus pushing implied principles to their results, that their incoherence can be made plain. Once more, if this simple uniform thing called life be the sole cause, determining organic Evolution and selecting accidental variations, just in so far as they favour its own maintenance and multiplication, then every organ, appliance, and faculty by which man differs from the simplest bioplast, is merely a life-preserving contrivance. To speak human-wise, Nature in that case has but one end--animal life; and chooses every means solely with a view to that end. She does not care about pain or pleasure, or consciousness, or knowledge, or truth, or morality, or society, or science, or religion, for their own sakes; she cares for life only, and for these so far as--like horns and teeth and claws--they are conducive to life.
Evolution therefore is governed by a blind non-moral principle--as blind and ruthless as gravitation. This being so, the mind is for the sake of the body, and not conversely. Evolution is not making for truth and righteousness as for greater or even as for co-ordinate ends; but simply for life, to which sometimes truth and righteousness, but just as often illusion and selfishness, are means. There is nothing therefore in this process of Nature to make us trust that our mind really makes for truth as such, or that it has any essential tendency to greater correspondence with reality, beyond what subserves to fuller animal existence. The fact that a certain belief makes animal life possible is no proof of its truth, but only of its expediency. The extent to which many pleasures depend on illusion is proverbial; and pleasure is almost the note of vital vigour, according to this philosophy.
Plainly, our argument from the adaptability of a belief to man"s higher moral needs, vanishes into thin air as soon as the key to the order of nature is thus sought in a blind non-moral tendency, and when that which is lowest is put at the top, and everything above it made to minister to it.
But then it is not only this particular argument that perishes, but all possibility of arguing at all, all faith in our mental faculties, except so far as they minister to the finding of food and the propagation of life. Thus the very attempt to prove such a system of Evolution is a contradiction, since it cuts away all basis of proof. On this I need not dwell longer, since it has been worked out so fully and clearly by others. We get rid of the argument from adaptability, by a conception of the order of Nature that reduces us to mental and moral chaos.
In its semblance of simplicity this form of Evolution-philosophy shows itself kin to those other old-world attempts to dispense with a governing mind, and to educe the existing cosmos from the blind strife of primordial atoms. It has indeed a more plausible basis, seeing how many things, too quickly attributed to design in a theological age, can really be explained by the struggle for existence. But in trying to make an occasional and partial cause universal and ultimate, it has undertaken the impossible task of bringing the greater out of the less; which really means bringing their difference out of nothing--and this is creation with the First Cause left out; that is, spontaneous creation.
It is from first to last an "aggregation" theory, and has to face the insupportable burdens which such a theory brings with it. Haunted by a false a.n.a.logy drawn from the political organism whose members are intelligent and self-directive, and who put themselves under an intelligent government to be marshalled and directed to one common end--haunted by this anthropomorphic conception, it tries to explain how independent and indestructible units, void of all intelligence, come together into polities with no a.s.signable government; and how these groups or polities, which are nothing separate from the sum of their components, are aggregated to one another in like manner; until at last we come to the highest organism, which again is only the sum of its ultimate atoms, and its activity the sum of their activities--the whole distinction between highest and lowest organism being such as exists between a society of two and a highly complex civilized state. And all this political life is the spontaneous work of unintelligent units; that is to say, we have results exceeding the highest ever attained by human intelligence, long before intelligence or sentience has yet been evolved.
n.o.body will care to support "Pangenesis" as a theory of generation. To suppose that there is a mysterious power which breaks a little fraction off each of the bioplasts of which we are a.s.serted to be the sum; that having collected these fractions it arranges them all in the right order within the compa.s.s of a single germ, and from that germ reproduces the parent organism, is an hypothesis compared with which the creation of the world in its entirety six thousand years ago, including the fossils and remains of aeonian civilizations, is lucid and intelligible. This is no hyperbole. For if once we allow creation at all, the creation of the world at any stage of Evolution is just as conceivable as the creation of primordial atoms. If any living thing were now created (e.g., a grain of corn or a full ear) it would bear in itself the apparent evidence of having _grown_ to its present state _ab ovo_; or the _ovum_ itself would seem to ground a similar false inference of having come from a parent. Strange as such an idea may be, it is easy and pellucid compared with the hypothesis of Pangenesis--still more when we remember that this complex germ, which is a lion or a horse in small--itself the elaboration of aeons of Evolution--can replicate itself with ease and rapidity, reproducing in adjacent pabulum a "cosmos" which differs in degree, not in kind, from that described in the story of the Six Days.
Yet the more we look into it, the more clear is it that Pangenesis (and not Polarigenesis or Perigenesis) is the inevitable outcome of the aggregation-theory of life.
And therefore to return to our former a.s.sertion, whatever we seem to gain in simplicity of statement by this form of the Evolution theory, we pay for dearly when we come to its application; nay more, as soon as we attempt to translate the words into clear and distinct ideas, we are left with nothing coherent that the mind can get hold of; and it is only at this price that we can cut away the basis of the "argument from adaptability," and with it the basis of all reason and morality. We must therefore go on to examine if there be any alternative form of the same philosophy more bearable.
I have forborne all criticism of the supposed _facts_ on which Evolution is based; as others have dealt frequently with their various weaknesses.
Nor do I think it necessary to deal with the extravagant subordinate hypotheses by aid of which facts are forced under the main hypothesis, e.g., those which explain how the horse grew out of the hipparion. The crudest finalists have been everywhere out-stripped by Evolutionists in dextrous application of the argument _a posse ad esse_.
III.
a.s.suming still that the facts collected and arranged by experimental science in favour of the hypothesis are such as to demand some kind of Evolution-philosophy; a.s.suming that the very imperfect serial cla.s.sification of living things according to their degree of organic definiteness, coherence, and heterogeneity not merely represents a variety which has always coexisted since life was possible on this earth, but rather traces out or hints at the genetic process by which this variety has been produced, let us see if there be any other governing principle directing the process, more intelligible than the persistence of that mere organic life which cannot even be thought of as distinct from those appliances and functions which it is supposed to have evolved for its own service by "natural selection."
Let us admit, what is really evident, that life is nothing distinct from the sum of those functions which minister to the preservation of life; and that therefore it is not the same thing in a man and in a mud-turtle. Man"s superior faculties are not merely a more complicated machinery for producing an identical effect which the mud-turtle produces more simply and abundantly, but rather by their very play _const.i.tute_ an entirely different and higher kind of life. When Hume, in his _Treatise on Human Nature_, says: "Reason is and ought to be the slave of the pa.s.sions and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them," he implies that the exercise of reason is no const.i.tuent factor of human life, but something outside it, subordinate to it, whereas that life itself consists in pa.s.sion, or pleasurable sensation, of which man, in virtue of his reason and other advantages, secures more than do his fellow-animals. This is just the conception of life which we have seen to be incoherent on close inspection; and if it be so, then the evolutionary process is a struggle not for bare life or existence, but for the prevalence of the _higher kinds_ of life and existence; and intelligence and morality are not only co-operative as instruments in maintaining and extending human life, but are themselves the princ.i.p.al elements of that complex life. True, the mind does minister to the body and preserve it; but still more does the body minister to the mind; or rather, each ministers to that whole in which the play of the mind is the princ.i.p.al function and the play of the body subordinate. If, then, we hold to the verdict of our common sense, and regard our mental life not as subordinate to our sensitive and vegetal life, but as co-ordinate and even superior, we must (so to speak) view it as no less "for its own sake," as no less an "end in itself" than they are, but rather much more; we must regard evolution as making for the life of truth and the life of righteousness even more princ.i.p.ally than for bare existence or animal vitality. It is now no longer mere life that tries to a.s.sert itself, and in the struggle shapes things to what they are; but it is the very highest kind of life, that is trying to come to the birth. Nature inherently tends to the higher through the lower forms of life, and these minister to the higher and receive in return from them the means of a yet more efficacious ministry.
In this conception, every function of the organism has two aspects, under one of which it is its own end and exists for its own sake as an element of the life of the whole; under the other it is ministerial, serving other functions above and below it, as it in return is served by them. Correspondence with the environment is, similarly, not merely a condition of life, but also that wherein vitality princ.i.p.ally consists.
"Living" is spontaneous self-adaptation to surrounding reality, taken in the very widest sense. The more diverse and multiform this adaptability, the fuller and higher is the life; and thus our ordinary common-sense cla.s.sifications are justified. Each new manifestation of life means some new correspondence with surrounding reality as we p.i.s.s from mere vegetation, and then add local movement, and one sense after another, till we come finally to intelligence and the life of reason and right-doing, which again, consists in self-conformation to things as they really are. In all this we are in agreement with common sense and common language, which identify the fullest life with the fullest activity; all activity being of the nature of response to stimulus, that is, correspondence to reality. As soon as consciousness supervenes on the lower forms of life it is evident that the pleasures of sight, hearing, taste, mind, and affection all depend on, and consist in, the consciousness of this successful accommodation of the subject to the object; and that all pain and disease is simply the felt failure of such adaptation. What was anciently and very wisely called the "natural appet.i.te" of living creatures is in this view nothing else but their response to the modifying attraction exerted upon them by the objective Reality which presses upon them on every side, and tends to draw them into conformity with itself so far as they have latent capacity for such a correspondence. It is the light that makes (or rather elicits) sight; and it is sound that develops the sense of hearing: and it is the ideas embodied in Nature that call our intellect into play. Hence it follows that, desire for truth and justice, for society and for religion, which a.s.sert themselves as invariably in the soul of man at certain stages of progress, as the desire for mere life a.s.serts itself from the first, is simply the felt result of the as yet unsuccessful endeavour of Nature to draw man into a fuller kind of correspondence with herself.
Thus conceived, the course of evolution is comparable, not as before, to the gradual unveiling of a blank canvas, revealing simply a greater extent of the same appearance, but to the gradual unveiling of a picture whose full unity of meaning is held in suspense till the disclosure is completed. We do not now interpret the higher by the lower, but the lower by the higher; the beginning by the end. This may seem perilously near to finalism, yet it is no more necessarily so, than the process of photography; we only need a self-adaptive tendency in life-matter responsive to the stimulating-tendency of the environment. Not, of course, that this bundle of words really explains anything, but that like other formulae of the kind, it prescinds from the question of ends and origins, by making a statement of what happens serve as a cause of what happens, and calling it a Law or a Tendency, or a Latent Potentiality--thus filling the gap which mere agnosticism creates in our thought.
With this conception of Evolution our ordinary estimates of "higher" and "lower" are saved; also the value of our mental processes upon which rests whatever proof the theory may admit of; while the "argument from adaptability" is provided with a firm basis independent of finality. All our "natural," as opposed to our personal and self-determined appet.i.tes or cravings,--those which are, so to say, const.i.tutional and inseparable from our nature in certain conditions, are evidence of the influence of some reality outside us seeking to draw us into more perfect correspondence with itself, and whose nature can be more or less dimly conjectured from the nature of those cravings. What are called "natural religions" represent man"s self-devised attempts to explain the reality answering to his religious and moral cravings. Revelation is but a divine interpretation of the same; as though one with dim vision were to supplement his defect by the testimony of another more clear-sighted.