DARWIN: THE DESTROYER
I
In studying the influence of Darwin and Darwinism, it is well to
begin by realizing clearly the crude orthodox religious conceptions
which prevailed with the mass of mankind through the Middle Ages
and well into the nineteenth century, as they prevail still in
some form among large portions of the population in Europe and
America. According to these conceptions the universe was created by
an omnipotent, thoroughly anthropomorphic Deity. In that universe
the terrestrial globe occupied a most important, if not a central
and pivotal position. The globe was peopled by living beings, each
created by the Deity in its particular form and kind, and all,
like the whole existing universe, subordinated to man, who alone
was endowed with a reasoning intellect and a moral nature. Thus
gifted, he was an object of peculiar solicitude to his Creator, who
interfered in every aspect of human fate, and whose favor could be
secured and his wrath deprecated by prayer and by the conformity of
human conduct to the divine decrees. In other words, the earth was
the primary object of the universe, and man was the primary object of
the earth, and hence of the universe also.
The speculations of Copernicus and the consequent development
in modern astronomy, showing that the earth was not the center
of the universe at all, but merely an insignificant and utterly
inconsequential speck in the vastness of stellar space, gave this
orthodox view a shattering shock. If the earth was of no consequence,
how could man’s consequence be supreme? Theology, with its fortunate
gift of agile adaptation, after first combating the new astronomy
with all its zeal, finally worked out to a belated acceptance of
what could not be resisted, and then ingeniously contrived, by huge
effort of reasoning, to reconcile science with orthodox views and to
restore man to his supremacy. But just when this had been happily
and satisfactorily accomplished, along came Darwin, and shattered
human distinction and superiority, and with them the ancient ideas
of Deity, even more completely than Copernicus had done. It is no
wonder that theology, exhausted by the earlier struggle, was at times
inclined to balk and give up the contest.
What interests us first is Darwin’s own attitude toward the
far-reaching consequences of his theory. In an earlier chapter we
have considered his religious views, so far as they affected him
personally. We are now concerned with the larger aspect of their
effect upon mankind as a whole.
That he was conscious of possible effects from the start is evident.
He had lived closely enough in contact with the orthodox attitude
to appreciate the results of disturbing it, and the deeper results
of disturbing the fundamental principles upon which it was based.
Nevertheless, he does not appear to have felt, or at least to have
been haunted by, the dread of a solitary and God-abandoned universe
that afflicts some of us. He was sensitive to concrete fears: ‘You
will then get rest, and I do hope some lull in anxiety and fear.
Nothing is so dreadful in this life as fear; it still sickens me
when I cannot help remembering some of the many illnesses our
children have endured.’[154] But his general mental attitude was so
healthy and so practical that he was not too much troubled by remote
apprehensions and dim spiritual possibilities. Thus he was inclined
to take an optimistic view of the workings of natural selection.
He believed that, on the whole, the sum of happiness exceeded that
of misery for sentient beings,[155] and he felt that indefinite
progress and advancement for man were perfectly compatible with
the conclusions to which his scientific study led him. As he puts
it in ‘The Descent of Man’: ‘To believe that man was aboriginally
civilized and then suffered utter degradation in so many regions,
is to take a pitiably low view of human nature. It is apparently
a truer and more cheerful view that progress has been much more
general than retrogression; that man has risen, though by slow and
interrupted steps, from a lowly condition to the highest standard as
yet attained by him in knowledge, morals, and religion.’[156] With
these undeniably optimistic leanings on Darwin’s part in mind, it is
amusing to read Lyell’s remark, that ‘he had frequently been asked
if Darwin was not one of the most unhappy of men, it being suggested
that his outrage upon public opinion should have filled him with
remorse.’[157]
At the same time, Darwin was perfectly aware that his theories tended
to shatter the orthodox view of man and his supremacy and even the
orthodox God. The sheer, simple statement of the matter appears in
one vivid phrase: ‘What a book a devil’s chaplain might write on
the clumsy, wasteful, blundering, low, and horribly cruel works of
nature!’[158] Especially Darwin knew well what fierce hostility he
should evoke from those who had grown up in the orthodox belief,
were wedded to it by all the force of habit and tradition, and
were intellectually unqualified to adapt themselves to any other.
Therefore, from the beginning, he proceeded with the greatest caution
and moderation of statement. This arose partly from his sweetness of
temper. He had no desire to wound or destroy, except as the truth
might compel him to do so. One early critic speaks admirably of
‘the magnanimous simplicity of character which in rising above all
petty and personal feeling delivered a thought-reversing doctrine to
mankind with as little disturbance as possible of the deeply rooted
sentiments of the age.’[159]
It was this caution and considerateness that induced him to write
such passages as the conclusion of the ‘Origin’ with its interesting
introduction for later editions of the phrase ‘by the Creator’ in
the last sentence.[160] And the caution did not result wholly from
timidity or unwillingness to shock, but was also brought about by
Darwin’s natural reluctance to commit himself in regions where he did
not feel at home, or to take one step beyond the properly scientific
province which he had really made his own. As to ultimate questions
he confessed himself to be in ‘a muddle,’[161] and why should he
interfere with the more definite creed of others?
On the other hand, where his conclusions were clear and well
established, he meant to speak out, and let the truth prevail,
without regard to the feelings of anybody. He wanted to sustain no
cause, to push no argument for itself, he wanted facts and nothing
else. And when he feels that he has yielded too much to popular
prejudice and to the desire to conciliate it, his regret is decided
and he determines to do so no more: ‘I have long regretted that
I truckled to public opinion, and used the Pentateuchal term of
creation, by which I really meant “appeared” by some wholly unknown
process. It is mere rubbish, thinking at present of the origin of
life; one might as well think of the origin of matter.’[162]
As regards this world, in questions of morals, of conduct, and
generally of the bearing of evolution on sociology, Darwin’s own
sturdy moral habit and self-poised temperament made him perhaps
unduly optimistic. Temptation had little hold upon him. Why should
it have more upon others, even unsustained by celestial guidance and
control? In ‘The Descent of Man’ he endeavors to show the social
instinct as a sufficient and satisfactory basis for upright living:
‘We have seen that even at an early period in the history of man, the
expressed wishes of the community will have naturally influenced to
a large extent the conduct of each member.... Thus the reproach is
removed of laying the foundation of the noblest part of our nature in
the base principle of selfishness.’[163] And elsewhere he adds, ‘It
is not improbable that after long practice virtuous tendencies may be
inherited.’[164] Yet the deadly, grinding, destroying implications
of the struggle for existence do crop out everywhere, and the best
intentioned efforts do not altogether disguise them: ‘It may be
difficult, but we ought to admire the savage instinctive hatred of
the queen-bee, which urges her to destroy the young queens, her
daughters, as soon as they are born, or to perish herself in the
combat; for undoubtedly this is for the good of the community; and
maternal love or maternal hatred, though the latter fortunately is
most rare, is all the same to the inexorable principle of natural
selection.’[165] While Darwin’s optimism as to possible consequences
appears, it seems to me, in a note to the ‘Descent.’ He is commenting
on an article of Miss Cobb, in which she says, referring to his
ethical explanations, ‘I cannot but believe that in the hour of their
triumph would be sounded the knell of the virtue of mankind.’ On
which Darwin remarks comfortably, ‘It is to be hoped that the belief
in the permanence of virtue on this earth is not held by many persons
on so weak a tenure.’[166]
When it comes to the bearing of evolution on another world, Darwin’s
attitude is equally interesting, and equally inconclusive. To me
one of the most characteristic and suggestive sentences he ever
wrote occurs in a letter to Wallace, of August, 1872 (italics mine):
‘Perhaps the mere reiteration of the statements given by Dr. Bastian
and by other men, whose judgment I respect, and who have worked long
on the lower organisms, would suffice to convince me. Here is a fine
confession of intellectual weakness; but _what an inexplicable frame
of mind is that of belief_.’[167] The implications here are almost
fathomless, but it is clear enough that to Darwin belief in general
was not a spiritual necessity of his being, but merely came with the
overwhelming obtrusion of fact.
In regard to a future life, Darwin recognized, in a passage I have
quoted earlier, that a belief in it was needed to complete the
process established here, and the dire necessity of the belief comes
out clearly in the passage suggesting the tragic physical future of
this earth: ‘I quite agree how humiliating the slow progress of man
is, but every one has his own pet horror, and this slow progress ...
sinks in my mind into insignificance compared with the idea or rather
I presume certainty of the sun some day cooling and we all freezing.
To think of the progress of millions of years with every continent
swarming with good and enlightened men, all ending in this, and with
probably no fresh start until this our planetary system has been
again converted into red-hot gas.’[168]
Yet when the question of the future has been debated over and over,
the result, as with other questions, is complete muddle and puzzle,
and all that can be said of them is: ‘The conclusion that I always
come to after thinking of such questions is that they are beyond the
human intellect; and the less one thinks on them, the better.’[169]
What at least stands out, is that Darwin does not greatly concern
himself with the enormous dislocation of life in this world which is
likely to follow the loss of belief in another.
And again, there is evolution and God. Darwin frequently insists
that he is no atheist, and that his system must not be charged with
any atheistical conclusion: ‘Let each man hope and believe what
he can. Certainly I agree with you that my views are not at all
necessarily atheistical.’[170] The belief in God is eminently useful:
‘With the more civilized races, the conviction of the existence of
an all-seeing Deity has had a potent influence on the advance of
morality.’[171] At every convenient opportunity God is given fair
play and a fighting chance: it rests with Him to make the most of it.
At the same time, the obstacles and difficulties are mountainous and
it would appear insuperable. Thus, there is the conclusion of ‘Plants
and Animals Under Domestication’: ‘If we assume that each particular
variation was from the beginning of all time preordained, then that
plasticity of organization, which leads to many injurious deviations
of structure, as well as the redundant power of reproduction which
inevitably leads to a struggle for existence, and, as a consequence,
to the natural selection or survival of the fittest, must appear to
us superfluous laws of nature. On the other hand, an omnipotent and
omniscient Creator ordains everything and foresees everything. Thus
we are brought face to face with a difficulty as insoluble as is that
of free will and predestination.’[172]
But the result in any case, if God is left in His universe at all, is
to remove Him very, very far away, and completely to demolish all
sense of His intervention in the little daily actions and experiences
of common life and all intimate communion and conference with Him in
regard to those actions. When ‘The Descent of Man’ is published, Mrs.
Darwin writes to her daughter, quite simply: ‘I think it will be very
interesting, but that I shall dislike it very much as again putting
God further off.’[173] For others besides Mrs. Darwin it reduced Him
quite to the vanishing point.
But if Darwin himself was contented to let God alone, so far as
possible, the more ardent and zealous of Darwin’s followers were
inclined to hustle the Creator out of the universe altogether.
This was especially true of the aggressive Darwinians in Germany.
They extended the deductions of evolution to all the practical
workings of human life in a fashion which Darwin distinctly
disapproved: ‘What a foolish idea seems to prevail in Germany,’ he
writes, ‘on the connection between Socialism and Evolution through
Natural Selection.’[174] To Darwin’s energetic disciple, Weisman,
the evolutionary theory seemed as solidly established as that of
gravitation: ‘We know just as surely as that the earth goes round
the sun, that the living world upon our earth was not created all at
once and in the state in which we know it, but that it has gradually
evolved through what, to our human estimate, seem enormously long
periods of time.’[175] And in Weisman’s opinion, evolution would
go on creating adequate moral ideals, as it has done in the past:
‘The number of those who act in accordance with the ideals of purer,
higher humanity, in whom the care for others and for the whole will
limit care for self, will, it is my belief, increase with time and
lead to higher ethical conceptions, as it has already done within
the period of human existence known to us.’[176] Häckel substituted
an exuberant, triumphant materialistic atheism for the crawling
superstitions of an earlier day.
In England Huxley endeavored to emphasize the complete separation
of religion and science, though no one really knew better than he
how fatally they interlock at every step. Spencer, in providing
evolution with a metaphysical apparatus, extended its bearing into
all the regions of speculative thought. It is not probable that
he is much read at present, but his ‘First Principles’ spread a
wide leaven of agnosticism among the youth of a generation ago,
and I do not know where you will find a more desolating statement
of the possible barrenness of evolutionary results than in the
conclusion of his Autobiography: ‘Then behind these mysteries lies
the all-embracing mystery—whence this universal transformation
which has gone on unceasingly throughout a past eternity and will
go on unceasingly throughout a future eternity? And along with this
rises the paralyzing thought—what if, of all this that is thus
incomprehensible to us, there exists no comprehension anywhere? No
wonder that men take refuge in authoritative dogma.... Lastly come
the insoluble questions concerning our own fate: the evidence seeming
so strong that the relations of mind and nervous structure are such
that cessation of the one accompanies dissolution of the other,
while simultaneously comes the thought, so strange and so difficult
to realize, that with death there lapses both the consciousness of
existence and the consciousness of having existed.’[177]
II
After considering Darwin’s view of the practical working of his
discovery, it is interesting to sum up, so far as is possible in
such vague and indefinite matters, one’s own impression of the
effect of the popular acceptance of that discovery. And here I must
emphasize that I am not dealing with philosophical or scientific
theories, least of all with any such theories of my own, but am
simply trying to suggest what seem to me the indirect and secondary
workings of scientific theory in the minds of vast masses of people,
even of those conventionally connected with the churches of various
denominations. It is hardly necessary to say that Darwin’s own
teaching cannot be held directly responsible for those workings,
and that many of them he would have completely rejected. Moreover,
it must also be recognized that Darwin in large measure summarized
and embodied the general scientific drift of the age. Especially
we must not overlook the immense influence of practical as well as
theoretical science in affecting contemporary life. An excellent
editorial in the Saturday Review of Literature (May 8, 1926)
emphasizes the importance of scientific invention and machinery on
nineteenth- and twentieth-century living, and this importance, both
direct and indirect, is almost incalculable. For example, printing
has spread thought among the masses. The sewing-machine has changed
the world of woman. The extraordinary development of transportation
has enormously increased the superficial bustle and distraction
of life, to the serious detriment of meditative and spiritual
interests. Nevertheless, the evolutionary theory may be regarded
as typifying and formulating all these complicated tendencies more
fully and effectively than any other. How the theory has worked is
well suggested in the pregnant words of Professor Osborn, though
he is careful to insist that it is the misunderstanding, not the
understanding, of evolutionary doctrine, that has caused the evil:
‘It may be said without scientific or religious prejudice that the
world-wide loss of the older religious and Biblical foundation
of morals has been one of the chief causes of human decadence in
conduct, in literature, and in art. This, however, is partly due to a
complete misunderstanding of creative evolution, which is a process
of ascent, not of descent.’[178]
Let us attempt to follow the workings of evolution in various phases
of life and thought. Take, first, politics. We cannot perhaps
establish two strongly opposed points of view in regard to the
phenomena of political life better than by contrasted quotations.
President Coolidge, speaking on October 29, 1926, said: ‘I do not
know any adequate support for our form of government except that
which comes from religion.’[179] Professor Keller, writing of
‘Societal Evolution,’ says: ‘What moves men ... is not thought, but
emotion. And what sets emotion going is interest.... What sets the
revolutions in motion, with the result of drastic selection in the
codes, is not the cerebration of any one over great issues, but the
unendurable discomfort and awakened emotions of the masses. Their
interests have been so outraged that anything seems likely to be
better than the present.’[180]
The great democratic movement of the past hundred and fifty years
naturally far antedated Darwinism. Its roots were laid in the
eighteenth century, with the teachings of the French philosophers,
chiefly Rousseau, and the practical action of the American and French
Revolutions. But the views of evolutionary science fitted admirably
with the intense individualism of democracy, its proclamation of the
right of the individual man to assert himself against every and all
others, high or low, rich or poor.
After democracy has made its way in the world, it is interesting to
see the effort of theology to claim it and to urge that the value and
importance of the individual is a gradual effect and an essential
element of Christian doctrine. It is true that Christianity has
always proclaimed the equality of all souls before God and their
equal need of salvation. But it is equally true that the Church
has always got along comfortably with every sort of tyranny and for
centuries solemnly sponsored the divine right of kings, alleging at
all times the unfailing text, ‘Render unto Cæsar the things which
are Cæsar’s.’ And it is more deeply true that the natural Christian
emphasis upon the importance of another world tends to create
indifference to the political concerns of this, so that, even in the
middle of the nineteenth century, revivalists like Moody could regard
political movements and reforms as matters of minor consequence in
face of the imminent cataclysm which would wipe out this world and
its doings altogether. The most vigorous and energetic insistence
on the rights of man as a mortal came from those who concerned
themselves very little with his immortality.
And if indifference to the other world affected politics, it has had
an even greater effect in the more general regions of sociology. So
long as the poor and wretched were taught—by the rich—that their
sojourn here was infinitesimally insignificant compared with the
bliss that awaited them hereafter, they could endure with comparative
patience. Lazarus could let the dogs lick his sores with fair
content, while he was comforted with the reflection that an equally
bad day was coming for Dives, and a great deal more of it. But when
he became convinced that this world was all, Lazarus bestirred
himself, and invented Socialism and Anarchism and Bolshevism and
many other isms with capital letters, which might enable him to
attend to the matter of Dives right here and to see to it that, if he
himself could not share all the blessings of the rich, at least the
rich might be made as miserable as he. We have become so gradually
accustomed to an adjustment to the standpoint of this world that we
hardly realize how completely and vastly it has entered into the
views and opinions of even those who do not explicitly admit it.
Take again the influence of science in the realm of art. From the
close of the eighteenth century external nature began to play a
rôle in the arts that it had never played before and the prominence
of landscape in painting was as notable as natural description in
literature. But during the first half of the nineteenth century this
natural influence was romantic, imaginative, emotional. With the
middle years the scientific tendency made itself felt, and art became
more closely and intensely realistic. This is perhaps most generally
obvious in the literary world, and the great novelists of France
from Balzac on embody the scientific movement of which Darwin is so
eminently representative. Most significant of all in this regard is
the great epic of Zola, the history of the Rougon-Macquart family,
in twenty solid volumes. I am not for a moment vouching for the
solidity of Zola’s science, which may be quite as fantastic in its
way as the romance of Dumas. The point is that Zola believed himself
to be typifying and illustrating scientific tendencies, and that the
popularly accepted notion of the struggle for existence, with all
its blind and bitter cruelty, its pitiful tragedy of the warfare
and merciless destruction of the animal world, was transferred to
humanity in the endless pages, as gloomy as they are powerful, of
the great French imaginative drama. And it is interesting, as we
come right down to the present day, to find a thoughtful critic
attributing the ugly and realistic tendencies of current American
fiction not to any passing upheaval caused by the World-War, but to
just this gradual influence of scientific thought making itself felt
everywhere: ‘What we are looking at is not the product of a decade or
an episode, even so supreme an episode as battle, but the fructifying
of scientific doctrines that for several decades have been seeping
into society. What we are witnessing is the yielding of the romantic
view of life to the scientific.’[181]
Thus scientific conceptions, working in the popular mind, have fixed
it upon the affairs of this world, and have reduced the various
phases of the other, formerly so immensely important, to a shadowy
inconsistency. Science, for example, has disposed of hell with
ludicrous completeness. The old material hell, as Dante and the
Middle Ages viewed it, a repository definitely under ground, with
devils busily engaged over boiling cauldrons, has surely vanished,
never to return. In the scientifically arranged physical universe
there is no place for it. Even my friend Moody, whose ideas of heaven
were so specific, does not attempt any such physical location of
hell. And it is true that the orthodox still take refuge in moral
torments, prolonged if not eternal horrors, which the erring spirit
in wilful perversity inflicts upon itself. But it is doubtful if
even the orthodox continue to take even these very seriously. There
cannot be many persons who still suffer from the brooding gloom with
which the concrete vision of hell genuinely oppressed thousands of
sensitive souls in ages past. And in some respects this may be set
down as a gain, since the misery to the sensitive souls was very
real, while how far the fear of hell acted as a deterrent to souls
of another order is always open to question. But, gain or loss, it
will hardly be disputed that the boiling depths of hell have largely
boiled away.
Unfortunately hell, in departing, has shown a marked tendency to drag
heaven with it. The same material difficulty of course obtains here
also. Moody used to proclaim that heaven was tangible, mapable, a
city like New York, only with more agreeable streets and doubtless
better traffic arrangements. But it is hard for the most devout
believer to-day to take so concrete a view. And it is not only that
the pearly gates and golden pavements have gone. Their disappearance
has given a rude jar to the belief in any kind of future life
whatever. I am merely speaking of the average American man in the
street, and perhaps of even the woman also. The negative views in
such matters announced shortly before his death by so good, so
upright, so in the largest sense Christian a man as Luther Burbank,
are beyond a doubt the views more or less definitely formulated of
millions of men in America to-day. The best they can say is, that
it is their business to live the life here in the most energetic,
straightforward, profitable way they can, to see that after their
deaths their wives and children are provided for, and to leave any
other lives to take care of themselves.
And then there is the question of God, and it seems that He has a
tendency to vanish also, with the disappearance of His celestial
habitation, so that I feel a pathetic touch of tenderness for
departed grandeur in capitalizing the pronoun. The scientific
sequence of cause and effect has permeated so thoroughly the minds
of even those who do not think of it in formal terms that the old
feeling of the intervention of Divine Providence in daily affairs and
the old intimate relation with a personal Father have been greatly
weakened where they have not been altogether forgotten. As Mrs.
Darwin suggests, God grows further and further away. It is sometimes
urged that this remoteness is connected with a deeper and more
serious reverence, that our relation to the immanent Deity has become
more worthily and profoundly spiritual; but there is great danger of
revering Him out of existence. In the Middle Ages men treated God as
familiarly as if He were a friend round the corner, but they felt Him.
Worship, at any rate Protestant worship, tends to lose its devotional
character and the overpowering sense of the Divine presence, and
to become a mere polite fraternizing for social purposes. You hear
many people say that they worship God better alone in the fields
than in the churches. As to some of the churches the feeling is
natural enough, but I wonder how many think of Him on the golf-links,
except in the form of profanity, or in the hurry and swirl of
traffic-crowded highways, or even in the fields, if anybody ever
gets there any more. And prayer? I have spoken in connection with
Darwin of my old friend who prayed, though he had nothing to pray
to. It may be that more keep up the habit than we suppose. But with
how many is it still a passionate intercession for divine help in
their daily needs or a means of self-forgetful communion with the
comforting, supporting, everlasting Arms? How many boys still pray to
have fence-rails lifted off them or to win in their games of baseball
and football? Can we possibly conceive such a state of things as
is indicated in Finney’s description of a revival a hundred years
ago? ‘Indeed the town was full of prayer. Go where you would, you
heard the voice of prayer. Pass along the street and if two or three
Christians happened to be together, they were praying. Wherever they
met, they prayed.’[182]
The most striking of all the dislocations effected by the intrusion
of the scientific attitude is in the banishment of sin. Not only
original sin has been swept away with the disappearance of the
older theology and the establishment of evolutionary doctrines, but
the uneasy, haunting torment of conscience and remorse appears to
have been greatly diminished. No doubt it still, as always, chiefly
harasses those who have least need of it. No doubt some persons
still vex themselves to agony for imaginary sins. But vast numbers,
especially of the younger generation, are like the heroine of
Lemâitre’s play, ‘a little woman who without any very definite idea
of the meaning of positivism, Darwinism, struggle for life, etc.,
lives in a moral atmosphere impregnated with all these things.’[183]
And as a consequence, her moral attitude undergoes the great
transformation of the modern world, by which an old-fashioned sin
becomes simply a new-fashioned mistake. In other words, expediency,
the belief that it does not pay to do wrong, takes the place of the
old divine sanction, divine command, divine reward and punishment.
There are many who take a very sanguine view of all this. To them
it seems that the old, instinctive sense of sin was stupid and
caused far more misery than it cured. Expediency, or enlightened
self-interest, working with the larger interest of the community,
is expected more and more effectively and satisfactorily to take
the place of the older categorical imperative. But to others it
seems that expediency is but a chill and slender reed to lean upon
when the stress of passion and temptation comes. ‘Oaths,’ says
Shakespeare, ‘are straw to the fire i’ the blood.’ The dread of
hell was often a mild deterrent enough, but it is doubtful whether
remote considerations of expediency will suffice to deter even so
effectively as hell-fire.
To these old-fashioned and conservative persons it seems likely
that the decay of a divine origin will weaken and break down the
springs of moral action and that in an enlightened self-interest the
enlightenment is hardly powerful enough to abolish the selfishness.
Some of these persons have even been disposed to see in the World
War something at least of the culmination of evolutionary doctrines
about the struggle for life and survival of the fittest, and it
is certainly in the protest against these doctrines that the
Fundamentalists find their best justification for attempting to set
back and repress the movement of human thought, if there were any
justification whatever for the unwisdom of an effort to dam the
Mississippi with a sheet of paper.
III
When we turn from the popular acceptance of evolution and its
workings, we may, if we choose, find plenty of interpretations of the
theorists yielding a different result.
Long before Darwin’s day evolution, in the sense of a larger process
of development and unfolding in the universe, had been foreshadowed
and cherished by the philosophers. Not to speak of the Greeks,
the successors of Kant in Germany had, each in his way, devised
some dynamic explanation of the spiritual world. Fichte had built
his mystical metaphysic of the ego, Schelling had worked out his
scheme of the adjustment of the I and the Not-I, Hegel had erected
his superb logical edifice on the framework of thesis, antithesis,
and synthesis, starting with the elements of being and non-being
reconciled in the progressive thesis of becoming, which in itself
seems to have the germ of the whole evolutionary development.
Schopenhauer and Hartmann had followed somewhat similar lines in
their pessimistic treatment of the Will and the Unconscious. So
again, the thinking of our own Emerson not only anticipates Darwin
in such detail as the lines I have already quoted,
‘And striving to be man, the worm Mounts through all the spires of
form,’
but is eminently suggestive of evolution in the intensely dynamic,
developmental quality of his thought, which perhaps also, in its
suggestion of a Pantheistic indifference to immortality, may be said
to be as destructive to humbler human hopes as Darwin was.
Also, there are the philosophers who, obviously coming within the
scope of evolution and Darwinism, transform and transfigure them with
a certain divine radiance and spiritual change. There is William
James. Forty years ago I happened to ride in a horse-car opposite
James, who was talking with all his splendid, eager enthusiasm to
a pupil sitting beside him. James said that for a time he had been
oppressed by the gloom of Schopenhauer’s pessimism. Then he had
pulled himself together and made up his mind that the true course
for him was to get rid of all the evil within his own reach, so far
as he personally could, and let the broader working of the universe
take care of itself. Here we see the germ which later grew into the
splendid fabric of Pragmatism, the belief that the Spirit, which
made the world of evolving phenomena, was itself a thing of dynamic
growth and force, able to create by its own native energy a future
and a reality and a God that should embody its highest ideals. A
parallel development appears in the ‘Creative Evolution’ of Bergson,
the theory of the creative spirit perpetually evolving in richer,
more splendid, more satisfying forms, through the eternal depths
of a luminous future. From the day when Darwin’s views were first
announced up to this very moment, up to the publication of such books
as Professor Whitehead’s ‘Science and Modern Thought’ and Professor
Lloyd Morgan’s ‘Emergent Evolution,’ thinkers have been busily at
work devising interpretations and developments of the evolutionary
doctrine, regardless of conflict and divergence, in the spirit of
Professor Whitehead’s admirable saying, ‘A clash of doctrines is
not a disaster—it is an opportunity.’ The results are somewhat
bewildering, and perhaps rarely satisfying to any but the thinkers
themselves, but they are at least stimulating and suggestive.
And there are the achievements of the clergy. As I have earlier
pointed out, it took many generations of herculean effort to get
the Bible and the Copernican theory into harmony, but by endless
processes of the reasonable wriggling which so much amused Darwin in
himself and others[184] the two were contentedly brought together.
Then appeared this later disturber of the peace, and at first the
theologians despaired. But when did a theologian ever quite despair?
Mankind must have God, must have Christ, must have the Bible, and
above all things must have a priesthood. If Darwinism did away with
the first three, I ask you what would the priesthood do for a living?
Therefore the contending elements must be reconciled, and should be.
Science in contradiction with religion? Fie! Never! Why, science only
clarifies religion, and religion enriches and fructifies science.
The marriage of the two is triumphantly proclaimed in the joyous cry
of Dr. Cadman, which typifies thousands of others, and demonstrates
that everything is for the best in the best of all possible clerical
worlds: ‘So far from evolution being incompatible with religion, it
is of all scientific theories the most easily accommodated to the
demands of faith. In itself the evolutionary hypothesis supplies
to all scientists and believers in religion one of the noblest
conceptions of the creative mind to be found anywhere in literature.
The idea of progressive development culminating in perfectibility
contains the most radiant optimism extant to-day.’[185] It would be
difficult to improve upon the splendor of that passage, but it offers
vast food for meditation. Somehow I turn from it instinctively to the
comment of Darwin upon one of his orthodox admirers: ‘How funny men’s
minds are! He says he is chiefly converted because my books make the
Birth of Christ, Redemption by Grace, etc., plain to him!’[186] How
funny men’s minds are!
And then there come along those pestilent Fundamentalists, with
whom some of us are much inclined to sympathize, and declare that
Darwinism shatters the Bible and Christ altogether. But the Bible, as
they read it, is infallible. Therefore Darwinism must be wrong: let
us crush it, and grind it, and stamp it out of the world.
The optimism of the scientists is quite as persistent and perhaps
a little more convincing than that of the theologians. There are
first those whom, without meaning any slur, one may call the
pseudo-scientists, writers who have had no special scientific
training or experience or discipline, but who apply their quick
literary wit to the consideration of evolutionary problems as of many
others. If Messrs. Butler and Shaw and Wells and the rest cannot be
said to have made scientific contributions of very great value, they
have at least applied thoughtful, acute, suggestive analysis and
stimulating conjecture in both religious and sociological lines.
The optimism of trained and professed scientists is, however,
somewhat more serious and more important. From the advent of
Darwin’s theory there have been those, like Asa Gray, who persisted
in regarding it as perfectly, luminously compatible with entire
orthodoxy. Gray himself maintained this position with militant
energy, and Mivart, though far more critical of Darwin, contrived to
reconcile the general principles of evolution with a long adherence
to the Catholic Church. In our day Sir Oliver Lodge has reconciled
a life of scientific research with spiritualistic beliefs, and even
Darwin’s co-discoverer, Wallace, ardently advocated spiritualism to
the end.
Others who are not quite so extreme in their conclusions, yet insist
that there is no conflict whatever between a firm belief in Darwinism
and a spiritual hope. Especially scientists of this type lay stress
upon the benefits which enlightened scientific theory confers upon
our life in this world. Evolution, according to them, teaches
the splendid progress of man in the past and in the future, his
enriching development, his enlarging solidarity in well-being and
well-doing. When one reads these almost ecstatic interpretations of
scientific possibility, one finds it really difficult to resist their
rapture. Listen to the enthusiasm of Professor Conklin: ‘The past and
present tendencies of evolution justify the highest hopes for the
future and inspire faith in the final culmination of this great law in
“One far-off divine event Toward which the whole creation
moves.”’[187]
The religion of the future is to be no worse than that of the past:
who knows but it may be infinitely better? ‘In the past religion has
dealt to a large extent with the individual and his relation to God;
its chief concern was the salvation of individual souls and their
preparation for a future life; it has been largely _egocentric_. The
religion of the future must more and more deal with the salvation of
society; it must be _ethnocentric_.’[188] In the charming words of
Meilhac and Halévy:
‘C’est imprévu, mais c’est moral. Ainsi finit la comédie.’[189]
‘Unexpectedly moral at that, It closes the comedy pat.’
To be sure, there are persons to whom all this ecstasy seems more
gorgeous than substantial. I cannot help thinking of the bitter
comment of Leopardi on the sciolists who were busily engaged in
making a happy whole out of wretched component parts: ‘The lofty
spirits of my day found out a new and almost divine scheme: not being
able to make any one person happy, they forgot individuals and set
themselves to making the community happy as a whole.’[190] And he
concludes,
‘I know not whether to pity or to smile.’[191]
I confess that I am myself perfectly, enormously egocentric, and
these _ethno_ considerations appeal to me very little. In so far
as the good of the race is identified with my personal comfort and
well-being, I am interested in it. But my ego cries out for God
simply for itself, and if it is to vanish like a dewdrop in the sun,
words cannot express my utter indifference to the well-being of the
race, of the world, and of the universe.
Nevertheless, it is probable that humanity will achieve some
adjustment in this matter. Mankind has always demanded spiritual
ideals and the divine presence, and always will demand them. If
they are lost, it will re-invent them. If they are destroyed, it
will re-create them. No doubt the speculations of the philosophers,
the merry doings of the clergy, and the persistent optimism of the
scientists will suffice to keep religion and the human soul and even
God upon Their feet and to enable Them to carry on decorously through
the dreamy flight of centuries to come.
IV
Meantime, it is interesting to consider how many of the great spirits
of the last generation, and especially of those most intellectually
influential, were profoundly moved by Darwinism and felt more or
less its haunting gloom of destruction and its far-reaching effect.
In Ibsen the struggle for existence shows itself in the intense
assertion of the individual and his passionate emphasis of the right
to live and develop himself, and the same tendency in Nietzsche grew
into the cloudy and colossal phantom of the Superman. With Tolstoi
the obsession of Darwinistic conflict and survival appears in the
earlier novels, ‘Anna’ and ‘War and Peace,’ but in the end, like Zola
or John Fiske, he found the pressure too great and too horrible, and
endeavored to establish an antidote for human misery in human love.
In Renan the subtle, delicate, enchanting irony serves only to make
the fundamental, dissolving nihilism more deep and ruinous. As he
expressed it, through the dramatic characters who are merely his
mouthpiece: ‘Uncertain as we are about human destiny, the wisest
course is to see to it that in making all sorts of hypotheses, one
at least avoids being too absurd’;[192] again: ‘Though the universe
should prove not serious, science might be serious still. Vast sums
of virtue have been expended on chimæras. It is better to take the
more virtuous course, even though one may not be sure that virtue
is more than a word.’[193] Or our own American Henry Adams asks
evolution to educate him, and asks in vain. All it can teach him is
that _terebratula_ can remain unchanged in its insignificance for
centuries, while man evolves, yet in the end proves to be no whit
more significant than _terebratula_. And Adams goes out, like a spent
torch, uneducated, in the huge, unmeaning, whirling acceleration of
theories and discoveries and plain sufferings and questions that must
remain forever unanswered. Yet perhaps Adams was quite as adequate to
the universe as Dr. Cadman.
There are, especially, two figures, not so important for the quality
of their thought, but immensely important for the influence of it,
who stand out as being overweighted and overcome by the evolutionary
blight. Anatole France, following Renan, filled his books and his
life with gentle, indulgent, kindly tolerance, with rare human
insight and sympathy. Yet beneath it all, beneath the lenient
tenderness of Sylvestre Bonnard, and the kindly curiosity of Jérôme
Coignard, and the patient comprehension of Monsieur Bergeret,
always there was the sense of the nullity of human effort and the
futility of human fate. All the motives and interests of men and
women are reduced to the Darwinian residuum of self-preservation
and propagation, or as France repeatedly puts it, more boldly and
baldly, love and hunger are the two poles of our being. And when he
makes intimate confession of the workings of the theory in his own
person and life, this is the result: ‘It is said, “Man is the lord
of creation.” Man is the lord of suffering, my friend. There is no
clearer proof of the non-existence of God than life.... If you could
read in my soul, you would be terrified.... There is not in all the
universe a creature more unhappy than I. People think me happy. I
have never been happy for one day, not for a single hour.’[104]
Or take the case of Mark Twain, far more important for Americans than
Anatole France, because it may safely be said that few if any authors
more influenced and to-day influence the youth of America than the
creator of Huckleberry Finn. Mark, like France, was the kindest,
the gentlest, the most humane of men and writers. His energetic
sympathy and support were given to relieve suffering and oppression
everywhere. But although he was not particularly expert in science
or philosophy, the plague of utter nihilistic disbelief had infected
his soul as completely as that of France, and far more militantly.
The destructive effect of the evolutionary teaching cannot be more
fully displayed than in the arguments which Mark, to save his own
credit, puts into the mouth of Satan in ‘The Mysterious Stranger’:
‘A God ... who mouths justice and invented hell—mouths mercy and
invented hell—mouths Golden Rules, and forgiveness multiplied by
seventy times seven, and invented hell; who mouths morals to other
people and has none himself; who frowns upon crimes, yet commits them
all; who created man without invitation, then tries to shuffle the
responsibility for man’s acts upon man, instead of honorably placing
it where it belongs, upon himself; and finally, with altogether
divine obtuseness, invites this poor, abused slave to worship
him!’[105]
In conclusion, perhaps one may introduce oneself, not in the least
as connected with all these distinguished persons, but simply as a
type of a great number of average human beings, who live and suffer
and have to fight their way somehow through the blinding mist of
years and tears. When I was sixteen, I read the ‘Origin,’ and I think
the impression it produced has never been obliterated. It is not,
it has never been, the maintenance of any deliberate philosophical
theory. I am too utterly without intellectual training or equipment
even to form such a thing. It is not any aggressive or militant
agnosticism. It is simply a feeling of utter insignificance in face
of the unapprehended processes of nature, such as Leopardi expresses
with bare intensity: ‘Nature in all her workings has other things to
think of than our good or ill.’[106] It is a sense of being aimlessly
adrift in the vast universe of consciousness, among an infinity of
other atoms, all struggling desperately to assert their own existence
at the expense of all the others.
Apparently this sense of struggle among individuals, struggle
everywhere, among theories and beliefs, as well as living creatures,
does not affect every one with the same oppression of distress. There
are natures so healthily constituted that they have the mere joy of
adventure in it, and can go on forever elbowing their way through
the crowd of other nothings with the splendid affirmation of their
individuality in the conflict. If it is a question of theories, they
can say with Professor Whitehead: ‘A clash of doctrines is not a
disaster; it is an opportunity.’ If it is a case of more material
strife, they can disguise it with the ameliorations of the social
instinct, or such substantial optimism as sustained President Eliot
through his ninety years in the view that the joy of life is in
‘contest without conflict.’
More infirm, more frail, more doubting tempers may not take it so.
There is the weary horror of endless multiplicity, sweeping from
eternity to eternity. There is the embodiment of the universe in
one individual, and yet the sense that that individual is more
fragile than the universe itself, the sense that reduces all life
and all one is to a mere shifting maze and complication of fleeting
sensations, held together by the vaguest gauze of memory, and liable
to be scattered and disseminated at any moment by the slightest
shock. No doubt the corrective for such a dissolving terror is to
live intensely in one’s own personality, without thinking of it,
to emphasize every moment _instinctively_ the huge importance of
one’s ego, which if it has its way is at all times adequate to fill
the endless spaces of the universe and crowd out the major stars.
But for some of us such emphasis is difficult to accomplish, and
instead, when one is thoroughly penetrated by the evolutionary
attitude, one is too apt to find oneself more insignificant than
_terebratula_, because one is conscious of one’s own insignificance
and _terebratula_ is not.
And it was Darwin, the gentle, the kindly, the human, who could not
bear the sight of blood, who raged against the cruelty of vivisection
and slavery, who detested suffering in men or animals, it was Darwin
who at least typified the rigorous logic that wrecked the universe
for me and for millions of others.