The doctrine of organic evolution, which forever established the
common genesis of all animals, sealed the doom of
anthropocentricism. Whatever the inhabitants of this world were or
were thought to be before the publication of ‘The Origin of
Species,’ they never could be anything since then but a _family_.
The doctrine of evolution is probably the most important revelation
that has come to the world since the illuminations of Galileo and
Copernicus. The authors of the Copernican theory enlarged and
corrected human understanding by disclosing to man the comparative
littleness of his world—by discovering that the earth, which had
up to that time been supposed to be the centre and capital of
cosmos, is in reality a satellite of the sun. This heliocentric
discovery was hard on human conceit, for it was the first broad hint
man had thus far received of his true dimensions. The doctrine of
evolution has had, and is having, and is destined to continue to
have, a similarly correcting effect on the naturally narrow
conceptions of men. It tends to fry the conceit out of us. It has
been impossible since Darwin for any sane and honest man to go
around bragging about having been ‘made in the image of his
maker,’ or to successfully lay claim to a more honourable origin
than the rest of the creatures of the earth. And if men had accepted
the logical consequences of Darwin’s teachings, the world would
not to-day—a half-century after his revelation—be filled with
practices which find their only support and justification in
out-of-date traditions. But logical consequences, as Huxley
observes, are the official scarecrows of that large and prolific
class of defectives usually known as fools. The doctrine of
evolution is accepted in one form or another by practically all who
think. It is taught even in school primers. But while the _biology_
of evolution is scarcely any longer questioned, the _psychology_ and
_ethics_ of the Darwinian revelation, though following from the same
premises, and almost as inevitably, are yet to be generally
realised. Darwin’s revelation, like every other revelation that
has come to the world, is perceived most tardily by those working in
departments where the phenomena are the most intangible and
complicated.
Darwin himself called ‘the love for all living creatures the most
noble attribute of man.’ Giant as he was, he perceived more
clearly than any of his contemporaries, more clearly even than his
successors, the ultimate goal of evolving altruism. For he says:
‘As man advances in civilisation, and small tribes are united into
larger communities, the simplest reason would tell each individual
that he ought to extend his social instincts and sympathies to all
members of the same nation, though personally unknown to him. There
is, then, only an artificial barrier to prevent his sympathies
extending to the men of all nations and races. Experience, however,
shows us how long it is, if such men are separated from him by great
differences of appearance or habits, before he looks upon them as
his fellow-creatures. Sympathy beyond the confines of man is one of
the latest moral acquisitions. It is apparently unfelt by savages,
except for their pets. The very idea of humanity, so far as I could
observe, was new to most of the Gauchos of the Pampas. This virtue
seems to arise from our sympathies becoming more tender and more
widely diffused, until they are extended to all sentient
beings.’[1]
The influences of a doctrine old enough and precious enough to have
become embodied in the life and institutions of a race persist
generally, through mere momentum, long after the substance of the
doctrine has passed away. This is eminently true of that
misconception which has come down to us regarding the nature and
origin of man and his relations to the rest of the universe. Darwin
has lived, shed his light over the world, and passed back to the
dust whence he came. Men no longer believe that other races and
other worlds were really made for them. But they continue to _act_
in about the same manner as they did when; they _did_ believe it.
This assertion applies not simply to those half-baked intelligences
who have only the rudest and most antiquated notions about anything
but also to thousands of men and women who pretend to have
up-to-date conceptions of themselves and the universe—men and
women noted even for their activity in reminding others of their
inconsistency—men and women who
‘Compound for sins they are inclined to,
By damning those they have no mind to.’
The doctrine of Universal Kinship is not a new doctrine, born from
the more brilliant loins of modern understanding. It is as old
almost as human philosophy. It was taught by Buddha twenty-four
hundred years ago. And the teachings of this divine soul, spreading
over the plains and peninsulas of Asia, have made unnumbered
millions mild. It was taught also by Pythagoras and all his school
of philosophers, and rigidly practised in their daily lives.
Plutarch, one of the grandest characters of antiquity, wrote several
essays in advocacy of it. In these essays, as well as in many
passages of his writings generally, he demonstrates that he was far
ahead of his contemporaries in the breadth and intensity of his
moral nature, and in advance even of all except a very few of those
living to-day, 2,000 years after him. Shelley among the poets of
modern times, and Tolstoy in these latter days, are others among the
eminent adherents of this holy cause.
Wherever Buddhism prevails, there will be found in greater or less
purity, as one of the cardinal principles of its founder, the
doctrine of the sacredness of all Sentient Life. But the Aryan race
of the West has remained steadfastly deaf to the pleadings of its
Shelleys and Tolstoys, owing to the overmastering influence of its
anthropocentric religions. Not till the coming of Darwin and his
school of thinkers was there a basis for hope of a reformed world.
To-day the planet is _ripe_ for the old-new doctrine. Tradition is
losing its power over men’s conduct and conceptions as never
before, and Science is growing more and more influential. A central
truth of the Darwinian philosophy is the unity and consanguinity of
all organic life. And during the next century or two the ethical
corollary of this truth is going to receive unprecedented
recognition in all departments of human thought. Ignorance and
Inertia are fearful facts. They endure like granite in the human
mind. But the tireless chisels of evolution are invincible. And the
time will come when the anthropocentric customs and conceptions,
which are to-day fashionable enough to be ‘divine,’ will have
nothing but a historic existence. The movement to put Science and
Humanitarianism in place of Tradition and Savagery, which is so
weak, languishing, and neglected to-day, is a movement which has for
its ultimate destiny the conquest of the Human Species.