Through Nature to God Part 3

[Ill.u.s.tration]

II

_Seeming Wastefulness of the Cosmic Process_

But as we look still further into the matter, our mood is changed once more. We find that this hideous hatred and strife, this wholesale famine and death, furnish the indispensable conditions for the evolution of higher and higher types of life. Nay more, but for the pitiless destruction of all individuals that fall short of a certain degree of fitness to the circ.u.mstances of life into which they are born, the type would inevitably degenerate, the life would become lower and meaner in kind. Increase in richness, variety, complexity of life is gained only by the selection of variations above or beyond a certain mean, and the prompt execution of a death sentence upon all the rest. The principle of natural selection is in one respect intensely Calvinistic; it elects the one and d.a.m.ns the ninety and nine. In these processes of Nature there is nothing that savours of communistic equality; but "to him that hath shall be given, and from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath." Through this selection of a favoured few, a higher type of life--or at all events a type in which there is more life--is attained in many cases, but not always. Evolution and progress are not synonymous terms. The survival of the fittest is not always a survival of the best or of the most highly organized. The environment is sometimes such that increase of fitness means degeneration of type, and the animal and vegetable worlds show many instances of degeneration. One brilliant instance is that which has preserved the clue to the remote ancestry of the vertebrate type. The molluscoid ascidian, rooted polyp-like on the sea beach in shallow water, has an embryonic history which shows that its ancestors had once seen better days, when they darted to and fro, fishlike, through the waves, with the prophecy of a vertebrate skeleton within them. This is a case of marked degeneration.

More often survival of the fittest simply preserves the type unchanged through long periods of time. But now and then under favourable circ.u.mstances it raises the type. At all events, whenever the type is raised, it is through survival of the fittest, implying destruction of all save the fittest.

This last statement is probably true of all plants and of all animals except that as applied to the human race it needs some transcendently important qualifications which students of evolution are very apt to neglect. I shall by and by point out these qualifications. At present we may note that the development of civilization, on its political side, has been a stupendous struggle for life, wherein the possession of certain physical and mental attributes has enabled some tribes or nations to prevail over others, and to subject or exterminate them. On its industrial side the struggle has been no less fierce; the evolution of higher efficiency through merciless compet.i.tion is a matter of common knowledge. Alike in the occupations of war and in those of peace, superior capacity has thriven upon victories in which small heed has been paid to the wishes or the welfare of the vanquished. In human history perhaps no relation has been more persistently repeated than that of the hawk and the wren. The aggression has usually been defended as in the interests of higher civilization, and in the majority of cases the defence has been sustained by the facts. It has indeed very commonly been true that the survival of the strongest is the survival of the fittest.

Such considerations affect our mood toward Nature in a way that is somewhat bewildering. On the one hand, as we recognize in the universal strife and slaughter a stern discipline through which the standard of animate existence is raised and the life of creatures variously enriched, we become to some extent reconciled to the facts. a.s.suming, as we all do, that the attainment of higher life is in itself desirable, our minds cannot remain utterly inhospitable towards things, however odious in themselves, that help toward the desirable end. Since we cannot rid the world of them, we acquiesce in their existence as part of the machinery of G.o.d's providence, the intricacies of which our finite minds cannot hope to unravel. On the other hand, a thought is likely to arise which in days gone by we should have striven to suppress as too impious for utterance; but it is wiser to let such thoughts find full expression, for only thus can we be sure of understanding the kind of problem we are trying to solve. Is not, then, this method of Nature, which achieves progress only through misery and death, an exceedingly brutal and clumsy method? Life, one would think, must be dear to the everlasting Giver of life, yet how cheap it seems to be held in the general scheme of things! In order that some race of moths may attain a certain fantastic contour and marking of their wings, untold thousands of moths are doomed to perish prematurely. Instead of making the desirable object once for all, the method of Nature is to make something else and reject it, and so on through countless ages, till by slow approximations the creative thought is realized. Nature is often called thrifty, yet could anything be more prodigal or more cynical than the waste of individual lives? Does it not remind one of Charles Lamb's famous story of the Chinaman whose house accidentally burned down and roasted a pig, whereupon the dainty meat was tasted and its fame spread abroad until epicures all over China were to be seen carrying home pigs and forthwith setting fire to their houses? We need but add that the custom thus established lasted for centuries, during which every dinner of pig involved the sacrifice of a homestead, and we seem to have a close parody upon the wastefulness of Nature, or of what is otherwise called in these days the Cosmic Process. Upon such a view as this the Cosmic Process appears in a high degree unintelligent, not to say immoral.

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III

_Caliban's Philosophy_

Polytheism easily found a place for such views as these, inasmuch as it could explain the unseemly aspects of Nature offhand by a reference to malevolent deities. With Browning's Caliban, in his meditations upon Setebos, that G.o.d whom he conceived in his own image, the recklessness of Nature is mockery engendered half in spite, half in mere wantonness.

Setebos, he says,

"is strong and Lord, Am strong myself compared to yonder crabs That march now from the mountain to the sea; Let twenty pa.s.s, and stone the twenty-first, Loving not, hating not, just choosing so.

Say, the first straggler that boasts purple spots Shall join the file, one pincer twisted off; Say, this bruised fellow shall receive a worm, And two worms he whose nippers end in red; As it likes me each time, I do: So He."

Such is the kind of philosophy that commends itself to the beastly Caliban, as he sprawls in the mire with small eft things creeping down his back. His half-fledged mind can conceive no higher principle of action--nothing more artistic, nothing more masterful--than wanton mockery, and naturally he attributes it to his G.o.d; it is for him a sufficient explanation of that little fragment of the Cosmic Process with which he comes into contact.

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IV

_Can it be that the Cosmic Process has no Relation to Moral Ends?_

But as long as we confine our attention to the universal struggle for life and the survival of the fittest, without certain qualifications presently to be mentioned, it is difficult for the most profound intelligence to arrive at conclusions much more satisfactory than Caliban's. If the spirit shown in Nature's works as thus contemplated is not one of wanton mockery, it seems at any rate to be a spirit of stolid indifference. It indicates a Blind Force rather than a Beneficent Wisdom at the source of things. It is in some such mood as this that Huxley tells us, in his famous address delivered at Oxford, in 1893, that there is no sanction for morality in the Cosmic Process. "Men in society," he says, "are undoubtedly subject to the cosmic process. As among other animals, multiplication goes on without cessation and involves severe compet.i.tion for the means of support. The struggle for existence tends to eliminate those less fitted to adapt themselves to the circ.u.mstances of their existence. The strongest, the most self-a.s.sertive, tend to tread down the weaker.... Social progress means a checking of the cosmic process at every step and the subst.i.tution for it of another, which may be called the ethical process; the end of which is not the survival of those who may happen to be the fittest, in respect of the whole of the conditions which exist, but of those who are ethically the best." Again, says Huxley, "let us understand, once for all, that the ethical progress of society depends, not on imitating the cosmic process, still less in running away from it, but in combating it." And again he tells us that while the moral sentiments have undoubtedly been evolved, yet since "the immoral sentiments have no less been evolved, there is so far as much natural sanction for the one as for the other." And yet again, "the cosmic process has no sort of relation to moral ends."

When these statements were first made they were received with surprise, and they have since called forth much comment, for they sound like a retreat from the position which an evolutionist is expected to hold.

They distinctly a.s.sert a breach of continuity between evolution in general and the evolution of Man in particular; and thus they have carried joy to the hearts of sundry theologians, of the sort that like to regard Man as an infringer upon Nature. If there is no natural sanction for morality, then the sanction must be supernatural, and forthwith such theologians greet Huxley as an ally!

They are mistaken, however. Huxley does not really mean to a.s.sert any such breach of continuity as is here suggested. In a footnote to his printed address he makes a qualification which really cancels the group of statements I have quoted. "Of course," says Huxley, "strictly speaking, social life and the ethical process, in virtue of which it advances toward perfection, are part and parcel of the general process of evolution." Of course they are; and of course the general process of evolution is the cosmic process, it is Nature's way of doing things. But when my dear Huxley a moment ago was saying that the "cosmic process has no sort of relation to moral ends," he was using the phrase in a more restricted sense; he was using it as equivalent to what Darwin called "natural selection," what Spencer called "survival of the fittest,"

which is only one part of the cosmic process. Now most a.s.suredly survival of the fittest, as such, has no sort of relation to moral ends.

Beauty and ugliness, virtue and vice, are all alike to it. Side by side with the exquisite rose flourishes the hideous tarantula, and in too many cases the villain's chances of livelihood are better than the saints. As I said a while ago, if we confine our attention to the survival of the fittest in the struggle for existence, we are not likely to arrive at conclusions much more satisfactory than Caliban's

"As it likes me each time, I do: So He."

In such a universe we may look in vain for any sanction for morality, any justification for love and self-sacrifice; we find no hope in it, no consolation; there is not even dignity in it, nothing whatever but resistless all-producing and all-consuming energy.

Such a universe, however, is not the one in which we live. In the cosmic process of evolution, whereof our individual lives are part and parcel, there are other agencies at work besides natural selection, and the story of the struggle for existence is far from being the whole story. I have thus far been merely stating difficulties; it is now time to point out the direction in which we are to look for a solution of them. I think it can be shown that the principles of morality have their roots in the deepest foundations of the universe, that the cosmic process is ethical in the profoundest sense, that in that far-off morning of the world, when the stars sang together and the sons of G.o.d shouted for joy, the beauty of self-sacrifice and disinterested love formed the chief burden of the mighty theme.

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V

_First Stages in the Genesis of Man_

Let us begin by drawing a correct though slight outline sketch of what the cosmic process of evolution has been. It is not strange that when biologists speak of evolution they should often or usually have in mind simply the modifications wrought in plants and animals by means of natural selection. For it was by calling attention to such modifications that Darwin discovered a true cause of the origin of species by physiological descent from allied species. Thus was demonstrated the fact of evolution in its most important province; men of science were convinced that the higher forms of life are derived from lower forms, and the old notion of special creations was exploded once and forever.

This was a great scientific achievement, one of the greatest known to history, and it is therefore not strange that language should often be employed as if Evolutionism and Darwinism were synonymous. Yet not only are there extensive regions in the doctrine of evolution about which Darwin knew very little, but even as regards the genesis of species his theory was never developed in his own hands so far as to account satisfactorily for the genesis of man.

It must be borne in mind that while the natural selection of physical variations will go far toward explaining the characteristics of all the plants and all the beasts in the world, it remains powerless to account for the existence of man. Natural selection of physical variations might go on for a dozen eternities without any other visible result than new forms of plant and beast in endless and meaningless succession. The physical variations by which man is distinguished from apes are not great. His physical relations.h.i.+p with the ape is closer than that between cat and dog, which belong to different families of the same order; it is more like that between cat and leopard, or between dog and fox, different genera in the same family. But the moment we consider the minds of man and ape, the gap between the two is immeasurable. Mr.

Mivart has truly said that, with regard to their total value in nature, the difference between man and ape transcends the difference between ape and blade of gra.s.s. I should be disposed to go further and say, that while for zoological man you can hardly erect a distinct family from that of the chimpanzee and orang, on the other hand, for psychological man you must erect a distinct kingdom; nay, you must even dichotomize the universe, putting Man on one side and all things else on the other.

How can this overwhelming contrast between psychical and physical difference be accounted for? The clue was furnished by Alfred Russel Wallace, the ill.u.s.trious co-discoverer of natural selection. Wallace saw that along with the general development of mammalian intelligence a point must have been reached in the history of one of the primates, when variations of intelligence were more profitable to him than variations in body. From that time forth that primate's intelligence went on by slow increments acquiring new capacity, while his body changed but little. When once he could strike fire, and chip a flint, and use a club, and strip off the bear's hide to cover himself, there was clearly no further use in thickening his own hide, or lengthening and sharpening his claws. Natural selection is the keenest capitalist in the universe; she never loses an instant in seizing the most profitable place for investment, and her judgment is never at fault. Forthwith, for a million years or more she invested all her capital in the psychical variations of this favoured primate, making little change in his body except so far as to aid in the general result, until by and by something like human intelligence of a low grade, like that of the Australian or the Andaman islander, was achieved. The genesis of humanity was by no means yet completed, but an enormous gulf had been crossed.

After throwing out this luminous suggestion Mr. Wallace never followed it up as it admitted and deserved. It is too much to expect one man to do everything, and his splendid studies in the geographical distribution of organisms may well have left him little time for work in this direction. Who can fail to see that the selection of psychical variations, to the comparative neglect of physical variations, was the opening of a new and greater act in the drama of creation? Since that new departure the Creator's highest work has consisted not in bringing forth new types of body, but in expanding and perfecting the psychical attributes of the one creature in whose life those attributes have begun to acquire predominance. Along this human line of ascent there is no occasion for any further genesis of species, all future progress must continue to be not zoological, but psychological, organic evolution gives place to civilization. Thus in the long series of organic beings Man is the last; the cosmic process, having once evolved this masterpiece, could thenceforth do nothing better than to perfect him.

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VI