Evolution Part 1

Evolution.

by Frank B. Jevons.

PREFACE

The object of this volume is to raise the question: if we accept the Theory of Evolution as true in science, how should it modify the thought and action of a man who wishes to do his best in this world? The question is necessary because we find that different and inconsistent conclusions on the point have been reached by men speaking in the name of science and speaking with authority. These differences are due not to anything in science, but to certain extra-scientific a.s.sumptions. To test the worth of such a.s.sumptions is the work of philosophy; and this volume is accordingly an essay in philosophy. Science is but organised common sense. Science and Religion both claim to deal with realities.

The realism of common sense, therefore, the form of philosophy to which both seem to point, is that which is set forth here.

I.

OPTIMISM

Innumerable writers at the end of the nineteenth century have reviewed the changes which in the last fifty years have come over the civilised world. The record indeed is admitted on all hands to be marvellous.

Steam, electricity, machinery, and all the practical inventions of applied science have added enormously to the material wealth, comfort, and luxury of mankind. Intellectually, the bounds of pure science have been vastly enlarged; and the blessings of education have been extended to the poorest members of the community. Philanthropic and religious activity manifests itself in a thousand different organisations. We are never tired of repeating, that changes which in the first half of the century would have been p.r.o.nounced impossible and incredible, at the end of the century are accomplished facts.

But amongst all these changes one is almost universally overlooked, and that the most characteristic, the most remarkable, and the most important: the face of civilisation has come to be illumined by hope.

Great as is the progress of the last fifty years, we count it as nothing compared with that which is in store for us. To the discoveries of science it is felt that no bounds can be set; what a day may bring forth in the way of the extension of man's control over the forces of Nature, what secrets of Nature the chemist in his laboratory may light upon at any moment, no man can surmise, but everyone is confident that things will be discovered as marvellous to us now as the telegraph and telephone to our predecessors of the pre-scientific age. In the treatment of political and social questions the same deep-seated conviction prevails that progress can and will be made: the conditions and causes of poverty can be ascertained by patient study, and when ascertained can be dealt with. The laws of physical health and cleanliness have not refused to reveal themselves, nor are moral health and cleanliness without their laws. In fine, if the best energy of the age is everywhere devoted to the increase of knowledge, the advancement of morality, and the diffusion of comfort, it is because everywhere there is hope. In the social as in the individual organism hope raises the tide of life, increases vitality, and stimulates the system. Hence this general discharge throughout the nervous system of society, manifesting itself in the vigour and energy with which all schemes for improvement are taken up and carried out. That discoveries will be made and progress effected is as certain as that gold is to be found in a goldfield; the only practical question is, By whom? Who is to be the lucky man?

To us who have witnessed the advance which has given rise to this universal hope, the hope itself seems so reasonable and so justifiable that we are apt to overlook the fact that it is without parallel in the history of mankind. Never, of course, has any generation of men imagined its own lot perfect; all have had their ideals, and all have believed their ideals to be true. But whereas we place the realisation of our ideals in the future, all previous generations have placed it in the past: the Golden Age till now has always been regarded as the starting-point of man's history, not its goal. All races have looked back with pride upon a heroic past; all mythologies tell of the better and brighter lot that was in the beginning man's; all poets sing of the brave days of old; all fairy tales begin with "once upon a time." The historians of Greece and Rome discovered no progress in the history of their countries, but only degeneration from the patriotism and simplicity of earlier times, or at best a series of changes making its round like the circle of the year's seasons. The philosophers of Greece are mainly occupied, when they deal with sociological questions, with the causes of corruption and decay of const.i.tutions; and, if they frame ideal const.i.tutions, they intend them to be final; they do not imagine them to have any possibility of growth. In modern times the same tendency has been equally manifest. Political revolutions have always aimed, not at introducing a new, but at restoring an old state of things: the actors in the French Revolution even dressed and posed as ancient Greeks and Romans. In philosophy, civilisation, as being artificial, has been regarded as a degeneration from a "natural" state of man which was at once primitive and perfect.

In the individual, optimism may be dismissed as a mere mood, or as a tendency to cheerfulness not based on any rational estimate either of the future or of the past. But when a whole generation of men, when, indeed, the whole civilised world, looks to the future, not with careless levity, but with the calm a.s.surance of confidence in the progress that is and is to be, we cannot dismiss its optimism offhand.

Astonis.h.i.+ng as it is, that the world as it grows older should grow more hopeful, there are good reasons for the fact.

The child's estimates of distance, magnitude, and importance differ from those of the adult. The estimates, however, persist in memory, and we have all discovered, on revisiting familiar scenes of childhood, how exaggerated our childish estimates were when compared with the actual facts. It is this exaggeration of memory, this illusion of the mind's eye, that psychologically is the foundation of the tendency to idealise the past. To us as children the exploits of our elders were marvellous in our eyes; and they remain as marvels in the memory, as marvels, however, which, as all marvels do, belong to the past. The past becomes the wonderland in which were performed the great deeds, not only of our fathers' time, but of the old times before them. The past becomes the poet's treasury, from which he produces things new and old--the abiding-place of all things good and great and beautiful which are not, but ought to be, and therefore once were.

To measure progress, as indeed to measure any movement and determine its rate and direction, some fixed points are necessary. As long, therefore, as there is no contemporaneous record of events, fixed in writing, there is no possibility of checking the _laudator temporis acti_ and of reducing the unconscious exaggerations of his memory to their due proportions. But even if there were, in the lowest stages of culture the rate of progress is too slow to be perceptible at the time. In the beginning man is at the mercy of his environment: it is only when he has learnt to modify it to his needs that progress begins to move. And by the time that man has pa.s.sed from savagery to barbarism, and has emerged from barbarism to civilisation, the conviction that the present and the actual are things of naught as compared with the ideal past, is too intimately inwrought with his religion, his mythology, his philosophy, and the accepted history of his race and its heroic origin to allow him to see facts as they are, or to divine the true trend of human affairs. Further, there is a very practical reason for his looking with suspicion and not with confidence on social changes. It is only as the result of a long course of slow evolution that society has attained to a condition of fairly stable equilibrium. In the beginning society may be compared to a man hanging on for bare life, with a precarious foothold, to the face of a sheer cliff: when the least movement may prove fatal, all movement is dreaded. Thus the characteristic of all early societies is that they are impeded by "the cake of custom" and rigid with the immobility of conservatism.

To those who hold that experience mechanically impresses itself upon the mind and so automatically expresses itself as truth, it must appear somewhat strange that mankind should have advanced for thousands of years without knowing that they had progressed; and still more strange that it was not as an induction from experience, but on _a priori_ grounds that they arrived at the conclusion. Yet so it was. The mere contemplation of the rise and fall of empires no more suggested the presence and persistence of a constant tendency to progress than the mountainous wave which threatens to engulf the s.h.i.+p suggests that the sea-level is a scientific truth. But when Darwin established his theory that man was descended from the brute, all was clear: it became certain _a priori_ that the long history and "pre-history" of man must have been one of progress and advance. When the descent of man was established, his ascent came to be studied, and human evolution was seen to be synonymous with progress. Savages were seen to be the nearest existing representatives of primitive man, and there was an end to the idea that the primitive state was perfection. The comparative method, once applied to the study of mankind, was able to set side by side examples of savagery, barbarism, and civilisation, which ill.u.s.trated every step in the process of the evolution of society, and showed that, though the forms of society may fluctuate as do the waves of the sea, society itself is steady in its advance and progressive in its evolution. This conclusion, which at first was a deduction drawn from the animal descent of man, has now the independent support of an enormous amount of evidence. The existence of a Stone Age, palaeolithic and neolithic, of a Bronze Age and an Iron Age, and the succession of those ages in the order named, are established facts of science. That the culture of nomad peoples is lower than that of pastoral tribes; that pastoral tribes advance in culture when they become agricultural; that agriculture, implying settled habits and fixed homes, leads to the foundation of cities and the formation of civic life; that the city-states of the ancient world give way to the nation-states of modern times: are all accepted facts, bridging the apparent chasm between civilisation and savagery, and demonstrating the action of the law of continuity in the evolution of society.

But, it will be observed, all these facts and arguments taken together only prove what has been--not what will be. They show that from a level little higher than the brute man has attained to what he is; but is this enough to guarantee his continuous rise? In other words, have we reached the real source of that universal hope which, as we have said, is characteristic of this stage of man's evolution? The bark of man's destiny hitherto has been wafted by a favouring and a steady gale, and it is natural enough for the unreflecting to take it for granted that the wind will always set from the same happy quarter. But the question will obtrude itself whether we are justified in the presumption.

If man shaped his own course, we might at least say that there was no reason why he should not continue to steer in the same direction as. .h.i.therto. But the most remarkable lesson that sociology has to teach us is that the course which he has followed so continuously has not been of his own steering. As we have already seen, man until this present generation has uniformly kept his eyes fixed on the quarter from which, not to which, he has imagined himself to be travelling, and, like a reluctant emigrant, has lamented the increasing distance between him and the happy sh.o.r.e from which he sailed. Or, to change the metaphor, society is an organism. Like all organisms, it starts as a relatively structureless ma.s.s; then, in accordance with the principle of the division of labour, different functions come to be performed by different parts; thus special organs are developed for the performance of special functions; division of labour further implies co-operation of the various organs and the development of the necessary means of communication and connection. All this is necessary for that evolution of society which we call progress; and of all these changes in the structure of society but few were ever intentionally planned by man. Mr.

Herbert Spencer has familiarised this generation with the idea that the foreseen consequences of any intended change are insignificant as compared with the consequences unforeseen and unintended. Hence the general rule that the structural developments on which the evolution of society depends are but rarely the result of the coercive and conscious changes effected by government: in practically all cases they are the unintended consequences of the spontaneous actions of individuals aiming at something else and unconsciously promoting the evolution of society. So, too, the animal organism is made up of living units, each of which unconsciously performs the part necessary to be played by it, if the organism is to live; and each unit, unconsciously again, even modifies the part it plays, in order to promote the changes which const.i.tute the evolution and the progress of the organism.

We must therefore dismiss the idea that the progress of mankind and the evolution of society have been planned by man or are due to his design; and we must recognise the presence in human affairs of some unseen, impelling power which is continually guiding them to good issues and shaping them to ends not even rough-hewn by men. This power, it is evident, must be one not limited in its action to the social organism, but manifesting itself in animal organisms also, since there also it produces similar results. That power, we need hardly say, is to be sought in "the struggle for existence": wherever organisms are in excess of the means for supporting them, compet.i.tion for food, for life, must ensue; and in this case the battle is to the strong, the race to the fleet. But of course strength is a relative term: what in some circ.u.mstances is a source of strength, in others may be a cause of weakness; and, generally, the very qualities which in some cases are of the highest value may in others be useless to their possessor. It is therefore the creature which possesses the particular kind of superiority required by the circ.u.mstances in which it finds itself, which is the creature that is likely to fare best, and is most likely to survive in the struggle for existence. But, further, the circ.u.mstances tend to produce the very superiority which they require: they ruthlessly reject and condemn to destruction every organism which fails to satisfy their requirements, thus leaving the field in possession of those organisms which have the required superiority. The next generation, therefore, is bred not from chance parents, but from parents which have been selected, by natural causes and the force of circ.u.mstances, as carefully as by the breeder who wishes to produce a prize animal. Every successive generation thus must be superior to that which preceded it.

Advance is the very breath of every organism's being, the condition without which existence is impossible. To the talents which it has, every being must add other talents, or be cast out into the darkness of non-existence; whereas to the good and faithful servant who exercises all the powers entrusted to him even wider rule is given. Neither this world nor the next is for the idle or for the stupid. The intelligence must be alert to detect the slightest element of possible superiority, and the will resolute to work it to the utmost of its worth. Man must be wise in his generation; and the wise man makes friends even with the mammon of unrighteousness, and that quickly.

If, then, it is by the perpetual and strenuous exercise of all its powers that an organism achieves the degree of superiority which is its contribution to the universal work of progress, it follows that "the performance of every function is, in a sense, a moral obligation," and that "the moral man is one whose functions are all discharged in degrees duly adjusted to the conditions of existence." Here, as elsewhere, the individual, to exist, must comply with the conditions of existence; and progress consists in more perfect compliance with the conditions. There is, however, a difference between the highly evolved organism, man, and the less complex organisms; between animal and human evolution; between biological and moral progress. In the case of the lower and simpler organisms, the creature is prompted simply and safely by its emotions to the performance of those functions on which its existence and the evolution of its species depend. But the evolution of man has been so rapid in its later stages, the social environment which he has himself created is so different from the circ.u.mstances in which he originally found himself, that his adjustment to his environment has become, so to speak, much looser, and consequently it is now no longer the case that actions in themselves pleasant are also necessarily beneficial in their consequences to the individual and to society. Moral progress, therefore, will manifest itself in the readjustment of man to his altered conditions. The consequence of that adjustment, when complete, will be that actions which are right--that is, are beneficial to the individual and to society--will always be pleasurable, not only in their consequences, but also immediately and in themselves. To this ideal, when all men will delight always in the thing that is right, and when all have attained to a height of morality now reached only by the few, man is being slowly but surely urged by the force which is the motive power of all evolution, the struggle for existence, regulated by the law which directs all progress, that of the survival of the fittest.

Here, then, we have the reason of the hope that is characteristic of our generation; here the foundation of the calm confidence with which we count on the continuance of progress as a thing a.s.sured us. It is not merely that progress has been made in the past, that the gale hitherto has steadily blown us on a favourable course. We have learnt that it must of necessity always blow from the same quarter. Man's course is not dependent on man's fitful will: the wind and waves obey not him, but the Power which directs all evolution, and "our strength in ages past" is shown by science to be "our hope in years to come."

II.

ILLUSION

It seems, then, according to the optimistic view set forth in the previous chapter, that Evolution is necessarily Progress, and progress is movement in the line of our moral aspirations produced _ad infinitum_. The changes that are and always have been taking place are and always have been changes for the better; the forms of existence which incessantly succeed one another necessarily develop from lower to higher, from good to better. And this conclusion is not a matter of religious faith, but of scientific necessity. The only forces and causes that it presupposes are those which we see and feel at work every day around us. For the reconstruction of the past history of the earth's surface, geology only requires to a.s.sume the operation during infinite past time of those agencies which at this moment may be seen to be slowly changing the face of the earth. The cooling of the earth's surface follows the same laws, and can be calculated with the same certainty as the cooling of a red-hot poker. The law of gravitation, which determines the movements of the heavenly bodies, is equally exemplified in the fall of an apple to the ground. In fine, the universe consists of bodies of matter in motion; the movements which occur within the range of human observation are sufficient to enable us from them to calculate the paths which they follow when they pa.s.s beyond our ken, and the correctness of our calculations is demonstrated when they reappear at the time and place predicted. The chemist recovers on one side of his equation every atom which the other side requires him to account for.

The stars in their courses confirm the calculations of the astronomer.

Matter is in perpetual course of redistribution, and the same everlasting laws which determine the forms into which it is incessantly being redistributed necessarily determine that those forms shall perpetually improve.

This optimistic view of evolution has met with general welcome, but on very different grounds in different cases. Believers in Divine Providence have eagerly greeted it as a startling and irresistible demonstration that their belief in a Providence over-ruling all things for good was true. No suspicion here was possible that the argument had been sophisticated by those with whom the wish was father to the thought. By science the testimony of science could hardly be impeached; and here was science on independent reasonings of its own, starting from purely materialistic ground, compelled by the force of its own arguments to bear witness to the truth which religion had so long proclaimed on the strength of faith alone. To this generation a sign had indeed been given.

On the other hand, the optimistic interpretation of evolution was welcomed with equal ardour by those for whom it removed the last difficulty they had in believing that there was no G.o.d. Hitherto the deeply rooted desire to believe that, in spite of all appearances to the contrary, good must triumph ultimately, and right-doing never be confounded, had seemed to necessitate belief in a righteous G.o.d. But now the necessity for any such a.s.sumption was done away with: the perpetual triumph of the good was a necessary aspect or expression of the mechanical action of particles of matter upon one another, as much as the law of gravitation itself, and based on exactly the same kind of evidence. From this it followed that religious belief was but a pa.s.sing phase in the process of evolution, useful enough as long as the real evidence for our faith in the good was unknown, but destined to dwindle to a mere rudiment and survival as fast as men become capable of seeing the truth of the matter, and of realising that religion is superfluous because it can offer nothing that is not independently a.s.sured by science. At the same time and in the same way the hope of future blessedness is brought down from the unsubstantial clouds of an imaginary heaven to the solid ground of a materialistic science, which never travels beyond the evidence of the senses.

Since, then, minds, which differ otherwise so much, are agreed that the optimistic interpretation of evolution is the true one, it seems not unreasonable to ask each how far they are prepared to push their optimism. We will ask the one side whether the reason why they believe in the goodness of G.o.d really is that, as a matter of fact, they see that good is incessantly triumphant around them, and triumphant as a matter of absolute necessity. Surely whether we consider what we daily see of life, or whether we consider the struggle with evil in our own souls, it is a mockery to say that good invariably triumphs here and now; and there must be illusion in the argument that would prove that it does. Could an argument that is based on the a.s.sumption that matter and motion are the only realities issue in anything but illusion when extended to spiritual experience?

To the other side we may put the question somewhat differently. It is agreed that all the many changes which are incessantly taking place in the universe, and which, added together, const.i.tute what is called the cosmic process, are incessantly and inevitably working for good, and themselves are always rising from good to better. But what of the Force, or Power, or Cause, or Reality which underlies them and of which they are the manifestation? May we infer that because they are good, it is good? That if the fruits are good, the tree must be good also? To this the reply will be that it is the manifestations which we know; they alone are known to us; they alone can be known to us. That which underlies them is not manifest; and that which is not manifested to us obviously cannot be known to us: it is the Unknowable. Obviously, therefore, it is impossible for us to say whether it is good or not. To affirm and to deny that it is good would both equally be to profess knowledge of the unknowable. Religion may profess--and, indeed, all religions have professed--to possess this inconceivable and impossible knowledge. But religion is not science.

On this view, then, there are limits to the optimism of evolution: to apply the term "good" to that which manifests itself as the cosmic process in evolution is mere illusion. But this raises a further question: If it is unmeaning to call the Unknowable Reality good, what precisely is the meaning and value of the term "good" when applied to those forms in which the Unknowable manifests itself to us?

To begin with, it is clear that if everything has been evolved, then our moral aspirations also are the products of evolution. It is they, indeed, that distinguish man from the brute; but even of them the law of continuity holds good: we can see not only how in man the virtues have been developed by civilisation, but we can trace the germs of conscience in that civilised animal the dog, as we can certainly see maternal affection, devotion, and self-sacrifice in the fiercest of undomesticated animals. In other words, the struggle for existence is waged better in co-operation than by individual effort; co-operation implies the subordination of individual impulse to the interests of the species or society; and such subordination, taking different forms in different stages of social development, is what we call virtue.

In the next place, the theory of evolution is built upon the ancient truth that nothing abideth long in one stay. Matter and motion are in perpetual course of redistribution, entering into countless combinations, and a.s.suming innumerable forms, which succeed each other like the waves of the sea, and like them are no sooner formed than they are gone. It follows, then, on this showing, that our moral aspirations are as transitory as other products of evolution. Indeed, as we look back over the pages of history we can see them always changing before our eyes--what is approved by savages is disapproved later; the virtues of the military stage of social development give way to those fostered, by the industrial organisation of society. In a word, our moral aspirations, being the outcome of evolution, have neither the permanence of matter and motion which are everlasting and indestructible, nor the reality which is the attribute of the Unknowable alone.

If any confirmation of this conclusion were required, it would be found in the fact that only a living, conscious being can entertain moral aspirations, or desire the good, or hunger and thirst after righteousness. And life and consciousness are but transitory phases of evolution. The earth's crust, the geologic record, testifies to the former existence of fauna now extinct. The science of heat makes it certain that the earth must cease to be habitable for any form of life; and with the extinction of consciousness, good and the desire for good, right and the striving after right, will be no more: matter and motion, brute matter and blind forces, knowing nothing of good or evil, will resume their ancient, desolate domain.

If, pursuing the same train of thought, we ask what meaning the optimistic evolutionist puts upon the word "good," we shall see that, according to him, the distinction between good and bad is one that applies, and can only apply, to certain moments in the process of evolution, but not to the process as a whole, just as we have already seen that according to the optimistic evolutionist the distinction does not apply to the Unknowable Reality of which the process of evolution is a manifestation. The law of life is laid down to be the struggle for existence, with the consequent survival of the fittest. In the struggle, that is good which is struggled for, viz. existence; and that conduct, in man or brute, is good which conduces to success in the struggle and enables the organism to maintain its existence. This can only be done by the adaptation of the organism to its environment, of the const.i.tution to the conditions. It follows, therefore, that "good"

is a purely relative term: it is only applicable with reference to organisms, and even in their case only to success and whatever contributes to success in the struggle for existence. But to the cosmos before the struggle for life begins, and after life and its struggles have relapsed into the insentience of unconscious matter, the term cannot be applied. Matter and motion, which exist before and after life's appearance, are everlasting and indestructible. Their existence is a.s.sured, and implies no struggle. They are eternal, organic life compared with them is momentary. The portion, then, of the cosmic process which can be spoken of as good is infinitesimal compared with the whole. Save for the brief moment during which organic life exists, it is as illusory to speak of the cosmic process as good as it is to apply the term to the Unknowable.

But if so much of our optimistic interpretation of evolution has proved to be an illusion which consists in the simple fallacy of using the word "good" in connections in which it has no meaning, can we hope to rescue the very small fragment that remains? Perhaps we may argue, that since that is good which conduces to human existence, the whole of the cosmic process up to now, having paved the way and prepared the earth for man, must be good. Thus at one stroke we seem to regain half at least of the territory we have lost. But it is only seeming, once more illusion, for the cosmic process which has prepared the earth for man's existence has also prepared it for his destruction: his good, his existence, and his destruction are equally indifferent to it. This conclusion is confirmed by the reflection that to regard the cosmic process as giving any consideration to man would be to ascribe purpose, consciousness, a knowledge of good and evil, and a preference for good, to the Unknowable of which the cosmic process is the continuous manifestation.

It is therefore mere illusion to imagine that evolution necessarily tends to good: it is absolutely indifferent to it. And as we must judge of the parts by the whole, we must conclude that human evolution follows the same laws as evolution in general. The steps in human evolution, like those in evolution at large, are not progress, are not changes working to a good end, but merely changes. Evolution is not progress, but mere change, as far as good and evil are concerned, a mere marking of time, or at most a series of movements in which advance and retreat cancel each other in the long-run.

At the same time, the evolution theory enables us to see plainly a cause at work which would inevitably produce in human minds the illusion that existence is good. Just as any species of animals which found a pleasure in actions ultimately entailing the destruction of the species would be condemned to extinction, so too only those varieties of the genus _h.o.m.o_ could survive in whom the conviction of the goodness and desirability of existence was strong enough to call forth the activities on which existence was dependent.

The optimistic interpretation of evolution is based on the "struggle for life" theory that "existence" sums up the good for which man struggles; and we have sought to show that the optimism which is based on this a.s.sumption must result in the conclusion that progress is an illusion.

Some readers, however, may hold that mere existence is not the only good that man is capable of struggling for.

III.

PESSIMISM

"The prospect of attaining untroubled happiness, or of a state which can, even remotely, deserve the t.i.tle of perfection, appears to me to be as misleading an illusion as ever was dangled before the eyes of poor humanity. And there have been many of them."[1]