"Species," "races," and "varieties"--Sexual division--Causation.
The two friendly disputants have again met. Sophereus begins their
further colloquy, in an effort to reach a common understanding of
certain terms, so that they may not be speaking of different things.
SOPHEREUS. I have more than once referred to the fact that
Nature does not permit crosses between the true species of animals,
in breeding, and that we have no reason to suppose it ever did. This
is a very important fact to be considered in weighing the claims of
your theory of evolution. I have been looking into Darwin, and I find
it somewhat uncertain in what sense he uses the terms "species,"
"races," and "varieties." In his "Descent of Man," he devotes a good
deal of space to the discussion of the various classifications made by
different naturalists under these respective terms; and there is no
small danger of confusion arising from the use of these terms unless
they are defined. The possibility of the process of evolution, as a
means of accounting for the existence of any known animal, depends
in some degree upon the animals among which, by sexual generation,
the supposed transition from one kind of animal to another kind has
taken place. Darwin speaks of the difficulty of defining "species";
and yet it is obvious (is it not?) that the theory of the graduation
of different forms into one another depends for its possibility upon
the forms which have admitted of interbreeding. While, therefore,
the term "species" is in one sense arbitrary, as used by different
naturalists, and there is no definition of it common to them all, it is
still necessary to have a clear idea of the limits within which crosses
can take place in breeding, because there are such limits in nature.
Thus, in the case of man, as known to us in history and by observation,
there are different families, which are classed as "races." Darwin
speaks of the weighty arguments which naturalists have, or may have,
for "raising the _races_ of man to the dignity of _species_." Whether
this would be anything more than a matter of scientific nomenclature,
is perhaps unnecessary to consider. Whether we call the "races" of men
"species," or speak of them as families of one race, we know as a fact
that interbreeding can take place among them all, and that between man
and any other animal it can not take place. The same thing is true of
the equine and the bovine races and their several varieties. Whether,
in speaking of the different families or races of men, we consider them
all as one "species," or as different species--and so of the varieties
of the equine or the bovine races--the important fact is, that there
are limits within which interbreeding can take place, and out of which
it can not take place. Do you admit or deny that the barriers against
sexual generation between animals of essentially different types,
which are established in nature, are important facts in judging of the
hypothesis of animal evolution?
KOSMICOS. Take care that you have an accurate idea of what the
theory of evolution is. Apply it, for example, to the origin of man,
as an animal, proceeding "by a series of forms graduating insensibly
from some ape-like creature to man as he now exists." This expresses
the whole theory as applied to one animal, man, without going behind
his ape-like progenitors. It does not suppose a crossing between
the ape-like creature and some other creature that was not an ape.
It supposes a gradual development of the ape-like creature into the
man as he now exists; and, of course, the interbreeding took place
between the males and the females of that ape-like race and their
descendants--the descendants, through a long series of forms, being
gradually modified into men, by the operation of the laws of natural
and sexual selection, which I need not again explain to you.
SOPHEREUS. Very well, I have always so understood the theory.
But then I have also understood it to be a part of the same theory that
there is important auxiliary proof of the supposed process of evolution
to be derived from what is known to take place in the interbreeding
of different races or families of the same animal. Whatever value
there may be in this last fact, as auxiliary evidence of the supposed
process of evolution, there must have been a time, in the development
of the long series of forms proceeding from the ape-like progenitor,
when an animal had been produced which could propagate nothing but
its own type, and between which and the surrounding other animals no
propagation could take place, if we are to judge by what all nature
teaches us. You may say that the laws of natural and sexual selection
would still go on operating among the numerous individuals of this
animal which had become in itself a completed product, and that to
their descendants would be transmitted newly acquired organs and
powers, new habits of life, and all else that natural and sexual
selection can be imagined to have brought about. But at some time,
somewhere in the series, you reach an animal of a distinct character,
in which natural and sexual selection have done all that they can
do; in which there can be no propagation of offspring but those of
a distinct and peculiar type, and the invincible barrier against a
sexual union with any other type becomes established. For this reason,
we must recognize the limits of possible interbreeding. It is best
for us, therefore, to come to some understanding of the sense in
which we shall use the term "species." For I shall press upon you
this consideration--that animals differ absolutely from each other;
that there can be no interbreeding between animals which so differ;
and yet that, without interbreeding between animals having distinct
organizations, natural and sexual selection had not the force necessary
to produce, in any length of time, such a being as man out of such a
being as the ape.
KOSMICOS. I will let Darwin answer you, in a passage which
I will read. "Whether primeval man," he observes, "when he possessed
but few arts, and those of the rudest kind, and when his power of
language was extremely imperfect, would have deserved to be called
man, must depend on the definition which we employ. In a long series
of forms graduating insensibly from some ape-like creature to man as
he now exists, it would be impossible to fix on any definite time when
the term 'man' ought to be used. But this is a matter of very little
importance." That is to say, in the long series of forms descending
from the ape-like creature, we can not fix on any one of the modified
descendants which we can pronounce to be separated from the family
of apes, and to have become the new family, man, because to do this
requires a definition of man. Man as he now exists we know, but the
primeval man we do not know. He may have been an animal capable of
sexual union with some of his kindred who stood nearest to him, but
yet remained apes, or he may not. It is not important what he was, or
whether we can find the time when he ceased to belong to the family
of apes and became the primeval man. The hypothesis of his descent
remains good, notwithstanding we can not find that time, because it is
supported by a great multitude of facts.
SOPHEREUS. I have never seen any facts which I can regard
as giving direct support to the theory. But, waiving this want
of evidence, doubtless it is not important to find the time,
chronologically, when the modified descendants, supposed to have
proceeded from the ape-like creature, became the primeval man; but
it is of the utmost importance to have some satisfactory grounds for
believing that there ever was such an occurrence as the development of
the animal man, primeval or modern man, out of such an animal as the
ape. And therefore, without reference to the sense in which naturalists
use the term "species," I shall give you the sense in which I use it.
I use it to designate the animals which are distinct from each other,
as the man, the horse, the ape, and the dog are all distinct from each
other. Speaking of man as one true species, I include all the races
of men. Speaking of the apes as another species, I include all the
families of apes. Speaking of the bovine, the equine, or the canine
species, I include in each their respective varieties. Now, as crosses
in interbreeding can take place between the different varieties or
families of these several species, and can not take place between the
species themselves--between those which I thus class as species--the
limits of such crosses become important facts in considering the theory
of evolution, because they narrow the inquiry to the possibility of
effecting a propagation of one species out of another species. Take any
animal which has become a completed and final product--a peculiar and
distinct creature--whether made so by aboriginal creation or produced
by what you call evolution. The reproductive faculty of the males and
the females of this distinct and peculiar animal is limited to the
generative reproduction of individuals of the same type, by a sexual
union of two individuals of that type. Their progeny, in successive
generations, may be marked by adventitious and slowly acquired
peculiarities; but unless there can be found some instance or instances
in which the process of modification has resulted in an animal which
we must regard as an 'essentially new creature--a new species--what
becomes of the auxiliary evidence which is supposed to be derived
from the effects of interbreeding between those individuals which
can interbreed? I lose all hold upon the theory of evolution, unless
I can have some proof that natural and sexual selection have overcome
the barriers against a sexual union among animals which are divided
into males and females of the several species, each of which is placed
under a law of procreation and gestation peculiar to itself, and never
produces any type but its own.
KOSMICOS. You wander from the principle of evolution. I
have to be perpetually restating it. Observe, then, that there are
multitudes of facts which warrant the belief that, starting with
any one kind of animal organism, however peculiar and distinct, the
struggle for existence among the enormous number of individuals of
that animal becomes most intense, and a furious battle is constantly
going on. The best-appointed males, in the fierceness of the strife
for possession of the females, develop new organs and powers, or their
original organs and powers are greatly enhanced. Their descendants
share in these modifications; and the modifications go on in a
geometrical ratio of increase through millions of years, until at
some time there is developed an animal which differs absolutely from
its remote progenitors which were away back in the remote past, and
which began the struggle for individual life and the continuation
of their species or their race in a condition of things which left
the fittest survivors the sole or nearly the sole propagators of new
individuals. This struggle for existence may have begun--probably
it did begin--before the separation of the sexes, when the organism
was unisexual or even asexual. That is to say, there may have been,
and there probably was, an organism which multiplied with enormous
rapidity, without the bisexual method of reproduction. The vast
multitude of such individuals would lead to the destruction of the
weakest; the strong survivors would continue to give rise to other
individuals, modified from the original type, until at length, by
force of this perpetual exertion and struggle and the survival of the
fittest, modifications of the method of reproduction would ensue, and
the bisexual division would be developed and perpetuated.
SOPHEREUS. I confess I did not expect to hear you go quite so
far. I will yield all the potency to natural and sexual selection that
can be fairly claimed for them as modifying agencies operating after
the sexual division has come about; but I have, I repeat, seen no facts
which justify the hypothesis that they have led to distinct organisms
between which no propagation can take place. But now you expect me to
accept the startling conclusion that at some time the asexual or the
unisexual method of reproduction passed into the bisexual, without
any formative will or design of a creating power, and without any
act of direct creation. We know what Plato imagined as the origin
of the sexual division, and that he could not get along without the
intervention of the gods. What modern naturalist has done any better? I
have examined Darwin's works pretty diligently, and I can not get from
them any solution of the origin of the bisexual division. I am left to
reason upon it as I best can. We know, then, that in the higher animal
organisms the individuals of each species are divided into the related
forms of male and female, and that for each species there exists the
one invariable method of the sexual union, and a law of gestation
peculiar to itself. One hypothesis is that this system was produced by
the operation of natural causes, like those which are supposed to have
differentiated the various kinds of organisms; the other hypothesis is
that it was introduced with special design, by an act of some creative
will. If we view the phenomena of the sexual division and the sexual
genesis in the highest animal in which they obtain, we find that
they lead to certain social results, which plainly indicate that in
this animal they exist for a great and comprehensive moral purpose,
which far transcends all that can be imagined as the moral purpose
for which they exist in the other animals. To a comparatively very
limited extent, certain social consequences flow from the law of sexual
division and genesis among the other animals. But there is no animal in
which the moral and social effects of this law are to be compared to
those which it produces in the human race. Not only does the same law
of multiplication obtain among the human race; not only does it lead to
love of the offspring far more durable and powerful than in the case
of any other animal; not only is it the origin of a society far more
complex, more lasting, and more varied in its conditions than any that
can be discovered in the associations of other animals which appear
to have some social habits and to form themselves into communities,
but in the human race alone, so far as we have any means of knowledge,
has the passion of sexual love become refined into a sentiment. You
may remember the passage in the "Paradise Lost" in which Raphael, in
his conversation with Adam, touches so finely the distinction between
sexual love in the human race and in all the other animals. The angel
reminds Adam that he shares with the brutes the physical enjoyment
which leads to propagation; and then tells him that there was implanted
in his nature a higher and different capacity of enjoyment in love. The
conclusion is:--
"... for this cause
Among the beasts no mate for thee was found."
In the human being alone, even when there is not much else to
distinguish the savage from the beasts around him, the passion of
love is often something more nearly akin to what might be looked for
in an elevated nature, than it can be among the brutes. What do the
poetry and romance of the ruder nations show, but that this passion of
sexual love in the human being is one in which physical appetite and
sentimental feeling are so "well commingled" that their union marks the
compound nature of an animal and a spiritual being? How human society
has resulted from this passion, how in the great aggregate of its
forces it moves the world, how in its highest development it gives rise
to the social virtues, and in its baser manifestations leads to vice,
misery, and degradation, I do not need to remind you. How, then, is it
possible to avoid the conclusion that in man the sexual passion was
implanted by special design and for a special purpose, which extends
far beyond the immediate end of a continuation of the race?
KOSMICOS. Why do you resort to a special purpose in the
constitution of one animal, and to the absence of a similar purpose
from the constitution of another animal? In both, the consequences make
a case of the _post hoc_ just as plainly as they make a case of the
_propter hoc_. It is just as rational to conclude that they only show
the former as it is to conclude that they establish the latter. In man,
we have the physical fact of the sexual division, and all you can say
is that it is followed by certain great and varied moral phenomena. In
the other animals, we have the same physical fact, followed by moral
phenomena less complex and varied, and not so lasting. In neither case
can you say that there was a special and separate design, according
to which the same physical fact was intended to produce the special
consequences which we observe in each. Why, as the species called man
became developed into beings of a higher order than the primates of
the race or than their remote progenitors, should not this passion of
sexual love have become elevated into a sentiment and been followed by
the effects of that elevation, just as the gratification of another
appetite, that for food, _par exemple_, has been refined by the
intellectual pleasures of the social banquet and the interchange of
social courtesies? Is there anything to be proved by the institution
or the practice of marriage, beyond this--that it has been found by
experience to be of great social utility, and is therefore regulated
by human laws and customs, which vary in the different races of
mankind? Monogamy is the rule among some nations, polygamy is at least
allowed in others. You can predicate nothing of either excepting that
each society deems its own practice to be upon the whole the most
advantageous. You can not say that there is any fixed law of nature
which renders it unnatural for one man to have more than one wife.
In many ages of the world there have been states of society in which
the family has had as good a foundation in polygamous as it has had
in monogamous unions. Looking, then, at these undeniable facts, and
also at the fact that marriage, whether monogamous or polygamous, is
an institution regulated by human law and custom, we have to inquire
for the reason why human law and custom take any cognizance of the
relation. We find that, among some of the other animals, the sexes
do not pair excepting for a single birth. The connection lasts no
longer than for a certain period during which the protection of both
parents is needed by the offspring, and not always so long even as
that. It has become the experience of mankind that the connection
of the parents ought to be formed for more than one birth; shall be
of indefinite duration; and this because of the physical and social
benefits which flow from such a permanency of the union. This has given
rise to certain moral feelings concerning the relation of husband and
wife. But we have no more warrant, from anything that we can discover
in nature, for regarding the permanency of marriage among the human
race as a divine institution than we have for regarding its temporary
continuance among the other animals as a divinely appointed temporary
arrangement. In the one case, the permanency of the union has resulted
from experience of its utility. In the other case, the animal perceives
no such utility, and therefore does not follow the practice. Upon the
hypothesis that all the animals, man included, had a common origin,
it is very easy to account for the difference which prevails between
man and the other animals in this matter of marriage, or the pairing
of the sexes. As man became by insensible gradations evolved out of
some pre-existing organism, and as moral sentiments became evolved
out of his superior and more complex relations with his fellows, from
his experience of the practical utility of certain kinds of conduct
and practice, the sentiments became insensibly interwoven with his
feelings about the most important of his social relations, the union
of the sexes in marriage. This is quite sufficient to account for the
difference between man and the other animals in regard to the duration
of such unions, without resorting to any intentional or divine or
superhuman origin of that difference.
SOPHEREUS. For the purpose of the argument, I concede that
this is a case of either the _post hoc_ or the _propter hoc_. I have
been pretty careful, however, in all my investigations, not to lose
sight of this distinction in reasoning on the phenomena of nature or
those of society. I think I can perceive when there is a connection
between cause and effect, when that connection evinces an intelligent
design, and when the phenomena bear no relation to a certain fact
beyond that of sequence in time. What, then, have we to begin with?
We have the fact that the human race is divided into the two forms of
male and female, and that the passion or appetite of sexual love exists
in both sexes, and that its gratification is the immediate cause of
a production of other individuals of the same species. We next have
the fact that this union of the sexes is followed by an extraordinary
amount of moral and social phenomena that are peculiar to the human
race. This sequence proves to me an intentional design that the moral
and social phenomena shall flow from the occurrence of the sexual
union, for it establishes not only a possibility, but an immensely
strong probability, that the phenomena were designed to flow from
this one occurrence among this particular species of animal. If this
connection between the original physiological fact and the moral and
social phenomena be established to our reasonable satisfaction, it is
the highest kind of moral evidence of a special design in the existence
of the sexual division and the sexual passion among the human race.
You remember old Sir Thomas Browne's suggestion, that men might have
been propagated as trees are. But they are not so propagated. If they
were, no such consequences would have followed as those which do follow
from the mode in which they are in fact propagated. These consequences
are most numerous and complex, and they are capable of being assigned
to nothing but the sexual division and the sexual union as the means
of continuing the race. Turn now to some of the other animals among
whom there prevail the same bisexual division and the same method of
procreation and multiplication. You find they result in sexual unions
of very short duration, and that, if it is followed by phenomena that
in some feeble degree resemble those which are found in human society,
they bear no comparison in point of complexity and character to those
which in the human race mark the family, the tribe, and the nation.
And here there occurs something which is closely analogous to what
I pointed out to you in considering the supposed development of the
first animal organism. I said that although you may theoretically
suppose that the first animal organism was formed by the spontaneous
union of molecular aggregates, and that the higher organisms were
evolved out of the lower solely by the operation of causes which you
call "natural," yet that when you come to account for the existence of
true and distinct species, each with its sexual division and its law
of procreation and gestation, you must infer a special design and a
formative will, because there has never been suggested any method by
which the so-called natural causes could have produced this division
of the sexes and this invariable law of the sexual procreation among
individuals of the same species. Here, then, we arrive at a distinct
moral purpose; for, when we compare the different social phenomena
which follow the operation of the sexual division and procreation in
man with the social phenomena which follow in the case of the other
animals, we find a difference that is not simply one of degree, but
is one of kind. We find the origin of the family, the tribe, and the
nation: the source of the complex phenomena of human society. We may
therefore rationally conclude that in man the sexual division and
the sexual passion were designed to have effects that they were not
designed to have in the other animals. To suppose that these vastly
superior consequences in the case of man are the mere results of his
perception of their utility will not account for the fact that when
he does not recognize the utility--when he departs from the law of
his human existence--human society can not be formed and continued.
Although it is possible for human society to exist with polygamous
marriages, and even to have some strength and duration, yet human
society without the family, with promiscuous sexual intercourse, with
no marriages and no ties between parents and children, never has
existed or can exist. Compare Plato's curious constitution of the body
of "guardians," in his "Republic," and the strange method of unions,
the offspring of which were not allowed to know their parents or the
parents to know their own children. This was not imagined as a form
of human society, but was entirely like a breeding-stud. Among the
brutes, permanent marriages, families, do not exist, not because the
animals do not perceive their social utility, but because the purposes
of their lives, their manifest destinies, show that there was no reason
for endowing them with any higher capacity for the sexual enjoyment
than that which leads to the very limited consequences for which the
division of the sexes was in their cases ordained. But in the case of
man there is a further and higher capacity for the sexual enjoyment,
which becomes the root of his social happiness, and which distinguishes
him from the brute creation quite as palpably as the superiority of his
intellectual faculties. In all this we must recognize a moral purpose.
KOSMICOS. Pray tell me why it is not just as rational to
conclude that these moral phenomena, as results of the human passion
of love, have become, in all their complex and diversified aspects,
the consequences of a progressive elevation of the human animal to a
higher plane of existence than that occupied by the inferior species,
or than that occupied by the primeval man. When man had become
developed into an animal in whom the intellect could become what it
is, he could begin to perceive the social utility of certain modes
of life, and from this idea of their utility would result certain
maxims of conduct which would be acted on as moral obligations. Thus,
commencing with a consciousness that the race exists with the sexual
division into male and female, there would begin to be formed some
ideas of the superior social utility of a regulated sexual union of
individuals and of permanent marriages. These ideas would become
refined as the progressive elevation of the race went on, and that
which we recognize as the sentimental element in the passion of love
would become developed out of the perceptions of a superior utility
in the permanent devotion and consecration of two individuals to
each other. If, then, by a moral purpose in the establishment of the
bisexual division you mean that all these social phenomena of the
family, the tribe, and the nation were designed in the human race to
follow from that division, I see no necessity for resorting to any such
moral purpose on the part of a creator, because they might just as
well have followed from the progressive elevation and development of
the human animal, supposing him to be descended from some pre-existing
type of animal of another and inferior organization. The philosophy
which you seem to be cultivating closely resembles that which ascribes
everything to the action of mind as its cause. This, you must be aware,
it is the tendency of modern science to antagonize by a different
view of causation. What have you been reading, that you adhere so
pertinaciously to the idea of a moral purpose adopted by some being,
overlooking those physical causes which may have produced all the
results without that hypothesis?
SOPHEREUS. I have been reading a good deal, but I have
reflected more. I may not be able to reconcile the metaphysical
speculations of the different schools of philosophy by explanations
that will satisfy others, but I can satisfy myself on one point. This
is, that power, force, energy, causation, are all attributes of mind,
and can exist in a mind only. Let us pass for a moment from abstract
reasoning to an illustration drawn from familiar objects. A ton of coal
contains a certain amount of what is scientifically called energy.
This energy becomes developed by combustion, which liberates heat. The
heat, when applied to water, converts the water into a vapor called
steam--a highly elastic substance. The expansion of the steam against a
mechanical instrument called a piston produces motion, and an engine is
driven. The force thus obtained represents the energy that was latent
in the coal. If we inquire whence the coal obtained this latent energy,
there is a hypothesis which assigns its origin to the sun, which laid
up a certain quantity of it in the vegetable substances that became
converted into coal in one of the geological periods of the earth's
formation. But in order to find the ultimate and original cause--the
_causa causans_ of the whole process--we must go behind the steam and
its expansive quality, behind the heat which converts the water into
steam, behind the coal and its combustible quality, and behind the sun
and its indwelling heat, a portion of which was imparted to and left
latent in the vegetable substances that became coal. We must inquire
whence they all originated. If they did not create themselves--an
inconceivable and inadmissible hypothesis--they must have originated
in some creating power, which commanded them to exist and established
their connections. Without a mental energy and its exertions, matter
and all its properties, substance and all its qualities, the sun's
indwelling heat and its capacity to be stored up in vegetable fiber
in a latent condition, could not have existed, and the forces of
nature of which we avail ourselves would never have emerged from the
non-existent state that we conceive of as "chaos." I know very well
that we are accustomed to associate with inanimate matter the ideas of
power, force, energy, and causation. But if we rest in the conception
of these as acting of themselves, and without being under the control
of an originating mind or a determining will, we may think that we
have arrived at ultimate causes, but we have not. We have arrived at
subsidiary causes--the instruments, so to speak, in the control of an
intellect which has ordained and uses them. Whether we look at the
physical causes by which the early Greek philosophers endeavored to
explain the phenomena of the universe, or at one of Plato's conceptions
of a designing and volitional agency in the formation of the Kosmos,
or to another of his conceptions, the sovereignty of universal ideas
or metaphysical abstractions, we are everywhere confronted with the
necessity for assigning an origin to the physical causes, or to
the universal ideas; and the result is that the idea of a supreme,
designing, and volitional agency is forced upon us--it is upon me--by
an irresistible process of reasoning, an invincible necessity of my
mental constitution. I can not agree with Auguste Comte, who regards
it as the natural progress of the human mind to explain phenomena at
first by reference to some personal agency, and to pass from this
mode of explanation to that by metaphysical abstractions. Nor can I
agree with you scientists, who not only rest satisfied yourselves with
the explanation of the ultimate cause of phenomena by mere physical
agencies, but who insist that others shall not deduce a personal and
volitional agency from the existence of those physical agencies. To me
it seems indispensable, in the study of phenomena, to recognize moral
purposes for which they have been made to be what they are: and of
course a moral purpose is not assignable to the physical agencies of
matter, or to metaphysical abstractions. Hence it is that in reasoning
on the phenomena of human society, I am obliged to recognize a moral
purpose in the sexual division, of far greater scope and far more
varied consequences than can be found in the case of the same division
among the other animals.
KOSMICOS. I put to you this question: What do you mean by a
moral purpose? In teleology, or the science of the final causes of
things, you must find out the producing agencies. Let me give you a
theory of causation, which will show you that your notion of a moral
purpose is altogether out of place. The only true causes are phenomenal
ones, or what is certified by experience. There are uniform and
unconditional antecedents, and uniform and unconditional sequences.
Something goes before, uniformly and invariably; something uniformly
and invariably follows. The first are causes; the last are effects.
We can not go farther back than the antecedent cause; we can not go
farther forward than the effect. We can not connect the effect with
anything but the antecedent cause. When, therefore, you speak of a
moral purpose, what do you mean? Where do you get the evidence of the
moral purpose? What is the purpose, and what is the evidence of it?
SOPHEREUS. I answer you as I have before--that the agencies
which you call phenomenal causes could not have established themselves;
could not have originated their own uniformity; could not have made
the invariable connection between themselves and the effects. If we
discard the idea of a moral and sentient being, a mind originating
and ordaining the physical agencies, we have nothing left but those
agencies; and in this the human mind can not rest. It is not enough to
say that it ought to rest there. It does not, will not, and can not.
Science--what you call science--may rest there, but philosophy can not.
It is unphilosophical to speak of the Unknown Cause, or the Unknown
Power, underlying all manifestations, as something of which we can not
conceive and must not personify. The ultimate power which underlies
all phenomena necessarily implies a will, an intellectual origin, and
a mental energy. That it is something whose mental operations we can
not trace, is no argument against its personality, and no reason why we
should not conceive of it as a mental energy.
KOSMICOS. You have more than once referred to the constitution
of the human mind as if it had been constructed with an irresistible
necessity to attribute everything to the action of a being, an
intelligence, and a will. You should rather say that _some minds_ have
trained themselves to this mode of reasoning, because they have first
received the idea of such a being as the final cause, as a matter of
dogmatic teaching, and they have tried to reason it out so as to attain
a conviction that what they have been taught is true. It is in this way
that they have found what they consider as evidence of a moral purpose.
But you have no warrant for the assumption that the human intellect
has been put together in such a way that it can not avoid reaching the
conclusion that all phenomena are to be imputed to the volition of a
mind as their producing cause.
SOPHEREUS. In speaking of the human mind and its incapacity
to rest satisfied with what science can discover of immediate physical
agencies in the production of phenomena, I have not overlooked the
fact that the idea of a Creator has been dogmatically inculcated as
a matter of belief. But I form my conception of the construction of
the human mind from the operations of my own mind. I have not trained
myself into any mode of reasoning. I have somehow been so placed in
this world that, as I have frequently told you and as I am perfectly
conscious, I am uninfluenced by any early teaching, and can judge
for myself of the force of evidence. When I say, therefore, that
the human intellect is so constituted that it is obliged to regard
mind as the source of power, I exclude all teaching but the teaching
of experience. There can not be two courses of reasoning that are
alike correct. If you uncover a portion of the earth's surface, and
find there structures, implements, and various objects which you
are convinced that the forces of nature did not produce, you must
conclude that they were the productions of mind availing itself of the
capabilities of matter to be molded and arranged by the force of an
intelligent will. You do not see that mind, you do not see the work in
progress, but you are irresistibly led to the conclusion that there
was a mind which produced what you have found. You can not reason on
the phenomena at all, without having the conviction forced upon you
that the ultimate cause was an intelligent being. You can not explain
the phenomena without this conclusion. How, then, can you explain the
more various and extraordinary phenomena of nature without attributing
their production to mind? You have no more direct evidence that the
Pyramids of Egypt, or an obelisk which has lain buried in the earth
for thousands of years, were made by human hands, than you have for
believing that an animal organism, or the solar system, was planned
and executed by an intelligent being. In both cases, you have only
indirect evidence; but in both cases that evidence addresses itself to
your intellect upon the same principles of belief. In the case of the
pyramid or the obelisk, you refer the construction to mind, because you
see that mind alone could have been the real cause of its existence.
In the case of the animal organism, or the mechanism of the heavenly
bodies, you are obliged to reason in the same way. Hence I say that
our minds are so constituted that there is but one method of correct
reasoning, whether the phenomena are those which can be attributed only
to human intellect, or are those which must be attributed to superhuman
power and intelligence. Hence, too, I speak of a moral purpose as
indicated by the phenomena. The pyramid and the obelisk were built
with a moral purpose. The animal organism and all that follows from
it, the structure of the solar system and all that follows from it,
were made to be what they are with a moral purpose. When you ask me for
the evidence of this purpose, I point to the fact that the phenomenal
causes, as you denominate the mere physical agencies employed in the
production of certain objects, were incapable of any volitional action,
and that without volition the connection between the physical agencies
and their effects could not have been established. The stone and the
chisel were the immediate physical agencies which produced the obelisk.
But who selected the stone and wielded the chisel? And who designed the
moral uses of the obelisk? Procreation, by the sexual union, is the
immediate physical cause of the existence of an individual animal. But
who designed its structure, appointed for it a law of its being, and
established the physical agencies which brought the individual into
existence and the moral consequences that those agencies produce?
KOSMICOS. We are no nearer to an agreement than we have been
in our former discussions. And the reason is that you do not perceive
the mission and the method of science. Science undertakes to discover
those causes of phenomena which can be verified by experience; so that
we can truly say that our knowledge has been advanced, and that we
really do know something of the things which we talk about. This is the
domain of science. Its conclusions do not extend into the region of
that which is unknown and unknowable. Inasmuch as its conclusions are
strictly positive, because they are demonstrated by experience, they
negative, as matter of knowledge, anything beyond. You may speculate
about what lies beyond, but you have no reason for saying that you know
anything about it; whereas men who reason as you do, and yet who do
not accept dogmas simply as matters of faith, are constantly trying to
persuade themselves that they know something about that of which they
have no means of knowledge. If you accept that something as a matter of
faith, because you are satisfied with the evidence which establishes,
or is supposed to establish, a divine revelation, you have a ground for
belief with which science does not undertake to interfere. But you have
no ground for maintaining that, from the phenomena of nature alone, you
can derive any knowledge beyond that which you can demonstrate as a
scientific fact.
SOPHEREUS. I accept your definition of the aims and methods
of science. But what I find fault with is the assumption that we are
not entitled to say that we know or believe a thing which can not be
demonstrated as a scientific fact, when we are all the time grounding
such knowledge or belief upon reasoning that convinces us of the truth
and reality of other things which in like manner are not demonstrable
as scientific facts. You may say that this is not the knowledge
which we derive from scientific facts, and therefore it is not to be
dignified by the name of knowledge. But we are always acting and must
act upon proofs which are not scientific demonstrations; and whether we
call this knowledge, or call it belief, we govern our lives according
to it. We accept the proof that a buried city was the habitation and
work of intelligent human beings, because we know that the forces of
nature, not guided and applied by intelligent wills, never constructed
a city. We accept the proof that men are just, merciful, courageous,
truthful, or the reverse of all this, because their actions prove it,
although we can not look into their hearts. What does all the estimate
of the characters of men rest upon, but upon their actions? And is not
this entitled to be ranked as knowledge of the characters of individual
men?
KOSMICOS. We must each retain his conclusions. Let our next
discussion relate to the origin of the human mind, and then we shall
see whether you will be able to resist the origin which evolution
assigns to it.
SOPHEREUS. I shall be glad to meet you again.