importance and which epistemology generally overlooks. If new
variations can arise, not only in organic but perhaps also in
inorganic nature, new tasks are placed before the human mind. The
question is, then, if it has forms in which there is room for the new
matter? We are here touching a possibility which the great master of
epistemology did not bring to light. Kant supposed confidently that no
other matter of knowledge could stream forth from the dark source
which he called "the thing-in-itself," than such as could be
synthesised in our existing forms of knowledge. He mentions the
possibility of other forms than the human, and warns us against the
dogmatic assumption that the human conception of existence should be
absolutely adequate. But he seems to be quite sure that the
thing-in-itself works constantly, and consequently always gives us
only what our powers can master. This assumption was a consequence of
Kant's rationalistic tendency, but one for which no warrant can be
given. Evolutionism and systematism are opposing tendencies which can
never be absolutely harmonised one with the other. Evolution may at
any time break some form which the system-monger regards as finally
established. Darwin himself felt a great difference in looking at
variation as an evolutionist and as a systematist. When he was working
at his evolution theory, he was very glad to find variations; but they
were a hindrance to him when he worked as a systematist, in preparing
his work on Cirripedia. He says in a letter: "I had thought the same
parts of the same species more resemble (than they do anyhow in
Cirripedia) objects cast in the same mould. Systematic work would be
easy were it not for this confounded variation, which, however, is
pleasant to me as a speculatist, though odious to me as a
systematist."[203] He could indeed be angry with variations even as an
evolutionist; but then only because he could not explain them, not
because he could not classify them. "If, as I must think, external
conditions produce little _direct_ effect, what the devil determines
each particular variation?"[204] What Darwin experienced in this
particular domain holds good of all knowledge. All knowledge is
systematic, in so far as it strives to put phenomena in quite definite
relations, one to another. But the systematisation can never be
complete. And here Darwin has contributed much to widen the world, for
us. He has shown us forces and tendencies in nature which make
absolute systems impossible, at the same time that they give us new
objects and problems. There is still a place for what Lessing called
"the unceasing striving after truth," while "absolute truth" (in the
sense of a closed system) is unattainable so long as life and
experience are going on.
There is here a special remark to be made. As we have seen above,
recent research has shown that natural selection or struggle for life
is no explanation of variations. Hugo de Vries distinguishes between
partial and embryonal variations, or between variations and mutations,
only the last-named being heritable, and therefore of importance for
the origin of new species. But the existence of variations is not only
of interest for the problem of the origin of species; it has also a
more general interest. An individual does not lose its importance for
knowledge, because its qualities are not heritable. On the contrary,
in higher beings at least, individual peculiarities will become more
and more independent objects of interest. Knowledge takes account of
the biographies not only of species, but also of individuals: it seeks
to find the law of development of the single individual.[205] As
Leibnitz said long ago, individuality consists in the law of the
changes of a being: "La loi du changement fait l'individualite de
chaque substance." Here is a world which is almost new for science,
which till now has mainly occupied itself with general laws and forms.
But these are ultimately only means to understand the individual
phenomena, in whose nature and history a manifold of laws and forms
always cooeperate. The importance of this remark will appear in the
sequel.
V
To many people the Darwinian theory of natural selection or struggle
for existence seemed to change the whole conception of life, and
particularly all the conditions on which the validity of ethical ideas
depends. If only that has persistence which can be adapted to a given
condition, what will then be the fate of our ideals, of our standards
of good and evil? Blind force seems to reign, and the only thing that
counts seems to be the most heedless use of power. Darwinism, it was
said, has proclaimed brutality. No other difference seems permanent
save that between the sound, powerful and happy on the one side, the
sick, feeble and unhappy on the other; and every attempt to alleviate
this difference seems to lead to general enervation. Some of those who
interpreted Darwinism in this manner felt an aesthetic delight in
contemplating the heedlessness and energy of the great struggle for
existence and anticipated the realisation of a higher human type as
the outcome of it: so Nietzsche and his followers. Others recognising
the same consequences in Darwinism regarded these as one of the
strongest objections against it; so Duehring and Kropotkin (in his
earlier works).
This interpretation of Darwinism was frequent in the interval between
the two main works of Darwin--_The Origin of Species_ and _The Descent
of Man_. But even during this interval it was evident to an attentive
reader that Darwin himself did not found his standard of good and evil
on the features of the life of nature he had emphasised so strongly.
He did not justify the ways along which nature reached its ends; he
only pointed them out. The "real" was not to him, as to Hegel, one
with the "rational." Darwin has, indeed, by his whole conception of
nature, rendered a great service to ethics in making the difference
between the life of nature and the ethical life appear in so strong a
light. The ethical problem could now be stated in a sharper form than
before. But this was not the first time that the idea of the struggle
for life was put in relation to the ethical problem. In the
seventeenth century Thomas Hobbes gave the first impulse to the whole
modern discussion of ethical principles in his theory of _bellum
omnium contra omnes_. Men, he taught, are in the state of nature
enemies one of another, and they live either in fright or in the glory
of power. But it was not the opinion of Hobbes that this made ethics
impossible. On the contrary, he found a standard for virtue and vice
in the fact that some qualities and actions have a tendency to bring
us out of the state of war and to secure peace, while other qualities
have a contrary tendency. In the eighteenth century even Immanuel
Kant's ideal ethics had--so far as can be seen--a similar origin.
Shortly before the foundation of his definitive ethics, Kant wrote his
_Idee zu einer allgemeinen Weltgeschichte_ (1784), where--in a way
which reminds us of Hobbes, and is prophetic of Darwin--he describes
the forward-driving power of struggle in the human world. It is here
as with the struggle of the trees for light and air, through which
they compete with one another in height. Anxiety about war can only be
allayed by an ordinance which gives everyone his full liberty under
acknowledgment of the equal liberty of others. And such ordinance and
acknowledgment are also attributes of the content of the moral law, as
Kant proclaimed it in the year after the publication of his essay
(1785).[206] Kant really came to his ethics by the way of evolution,
though he afterwards disavowed it. Similarly the same line of thought
may be traced in Hegel though it has been disguised in the form of
speculative dialectics.[207] And in Schopenhauer's theory of the blind
will to live and its abrogation by the ethical feeling, which is
founded on universal sympathy, we have a more individualistic form of
the same idea.
It was, then, not entirely a foreign point of view which Darwin
introduced into ethical thought, even if we take no account of the
poetical character of the word "struggle" and of the more direct
adaptation, through the use and non-use of power, which Darwin also
emphasised. In _The Descent of Man_ he has devoted a special
chapter[208] to a discussion of the origin of the ethical
consciousness. The characteristic expression of this consciousness he
found, just as Kant did, in the idea of "ought"; it was the origin of
this new idea which should be explained. His hypothesis was that the
ethical "ought" has its origin in the social and parental instincts,
which, as well as other instincts (e.g. the instinct of
self-preservation), lie deeper than pleasure and pain. In many
species, not least in the human species, these instincts are fostered
by natural selection; and when the powers of memory and comparison are
developed, so that single acts can be valued according to the claims
of the deep social instinct, then consciousness of duty and remorse
are possible. Blind instinct has developed to conscious ethical will.
As already stated, Darwin, as a moral philosopher belongs to the
school that was founded by Shaftesbury, and was afterwards represented
by Hutcheson, Hume, Adam Smith, Comte and Spencer. His merit is,
first, that he has given this tendency of thought a biological
foundation, and that he has stamped on it a doughty character in
showing that ethical ideas and sentiments, rightly conceived, are
forces which are at work in the struggle for life.
There are still many questions to solve. Not only does the ethical
development within the human species contain features still
unexplained;[209] but we are confronted by the great problem whether
after all a genetic historical theory can be of decisive importance
here. To every consequent ethical consciousness there is a standard of
value, a primordial value which determines the single ethical
judgments as their last presupposition, and the "rightness" of this
basis, the "value" of this value can as little be discussed as the
"rationality" of our logical principles. There is here revealed a
possibility of ethical scepticism which evolutionistic ethics (as well
as intuitive or rationalistic ethics) has overlooked. No demonstration
can show that the results of the ethical development are definitive
and universal. We meet here again with the important opposition of
systematisation and evolution. There will, I think, always be an open
question here, though comparative ethics, of which we have so far only
the first attempts, can do much to throw light on it.
It would carry us too far to discuss all the philosophical works on
ethics, which have been influenced directly or indirectly by
evolutionism. I may, however, here refer to the book of C. M.
Williams, _A Review of the Systems of Ethics founded on the Theory of
Evolution_,[210] in which, besides Darwin, the following authors are
reviewed: Wallace, Haeckel, Spencer, Fiske, Rolph, Barratt, Stephen,
Carneri, Hoeffding, Gizycki, Alexander, Ree. As works which criticise
evolutionistic ethics from an intuitive point of view and in an
instructive way, may be cited: Guyau, _La morale anglaise
contemporaine_,[211] and Sorley, _Ethics of Naturalism_. I will only
mention some interesting contributions to ethical discussion which can
be found in Darwinism besides the idea of struggle for life.
The attention which Darwin has directed to variations has opened our
eyes to the differences in human nature as well as in nature
generally. There is here a fact of great importance for ethical
thought, no matter from what ultimate premiss it starts. Only from a
very abstract point of view can different individuals be treated in
the same manner. The most eminent ethical thinkers, men such as Jeremy
Bentham and Immanuel Kant, who discussed ethical questions from very
opposite standpoints, agreed in regarding all men as equal in respect
of ethical endowment. In regard to Bentham, Leslie Stephen remarks:
"He is determined to be thoroughly empirical, to take men as he found
them. But his utilitarianism supposed that men's views of happiness
and utility were uniform and clear, and that all that was wanted was
to show them the means by which their ends could be reached."[212] And
Kant supposed that every man would find the "categorical imperative"
in his consciousness, when he came to sober reflexion, and that all
would have the same qualifications to follow it. But if continual
variations, great or small, are going on in human nature, it is the
duty of ethics to make allowance for them, both in making claims, and
in valuing what is done. A new set of ethical problems have their
origin here.[213] It is an interesting fact that Stuart Mill's book
_On Liberty_ appeared in the same year as _The Origin of Species_.
Though Mill agreed with Bentham about the original equality of all
men's endowments, he regarded individual differences as a necessary
result of physical and social influences, and he claimed that free
play shall be allowed to differences of character so far as is
possible without injury to other men. It is a condition of individual
and social progress that a man's mode of action should be determined
by his own character and not by tradition and custom, nor by abstract
rules. This view was to be corroborated by the theory of Darwin.
But here we have reached a point of view from which the criticism,
which in recent years has often been directed against Darwin--that
small variations are of no importance in the struggle for life--is of
no weight. From an ethical standpoint, and particularly from the
ethical standpoint of Darwin himself, it is a duty to foster
individual differences that can be valuable, even though they can
neither be of service for physical preservation nor be physically
inherited. The distinction between variation and mutation is here
without importance. It is quite natural that biologists should be
particularly interested in such variations as can be inherited and
produce new species. But in the human world there is not only a
physical, but also a mental and social heredity. When an ideal human
character has taken form, then there is shaped a type, which through
imitation and influence can become an important factor in subsequent
development, even if it cannot form a species in the biological sense
of the word. Spiritually strong men often succumb in the physical
struggle for life; but they can nevertheless be victorious through the
typical influence they exert, perhaps on very distant generations, if
the remembrance of them is kept alive, be it in legendary or in
historical form. Their very failure can show that a type has taken
form which is maintained at all risks, a standard of life which is
adhered to in spite of the strongest opposition. The question "to be
or not to be" can be put from very different levels of being: it has
too often been considered a consequence of Darwinism that this
question is only to be put from the lowest level. When a stage is
reached, where ideal (ethical, intellectual, aesthetic) interests are
concerned, the struggle for life is a struggle for the preservation of
this stage. The giving up of a higher standard of life is a sort of
death; for there is not only a physical, there is also a spiritual,
death.
VI
The Socratic character of Darwin's mind appears in his wariness in
drawing the last consequences of his doctrine, in contrast both with
the audacious theories of so many of his followers and with the
consequences which his antagonists were busy in drawing. Though he, as
we have seen, saw from the beginning that his hypothesis would
occasion "a whole of metaphysics," he was himself very reserved as to
the ultimate questions, and his answers to such questions were
extorted from him.
As to the question of optimism and pessimism, Darwin held that though
pain and suffering were very often the ways by which animals were led
to pursue that course of action which is most beneficial to the
species, yet pleasurable feelings were the most habitual guides. "We
see this in the pleasure from exertion, even occasionally from great
exertion of the body or mind, in the pleasure of our daily meals, and
especially in the pleasure derived from sociability, and from loving
our families." But there was to him so much suffering in the world
that it was a strong argument against the existence of an intelligent
First Cause.[214]
It seems to me that Darwin was not so clear on another question, that
of the relation between improvement and adaptation. He wrote to Lyell:
"When you contrast natural selection and 'improvement,' you seem
always to overlook ... that every step in the natural selection of
each species implies improvement in that species _in relation to its
condition of life_.... Improvement implies, I suppose, _each form
obtaining many parts or organs_, all excellently adapted for their
functions." "All this," he adds, "seems to me quite compatible with
certain forms fitted for simple conditions, remaining unaltered, or
being, degraded."[215] But the great question is, if the conditions of
life will in the long run favour "improvement" in the sense of
differentiation (or harmony of differentiation and integration). Many
beings are best adapted to their conditions of life if they have few
organs and few necessities. Pessimism would not only be the
consequence, if suffering outweighed happiness, but also if the most
elementary forms of happiness were predominant, or if there were a
tendency to reduce the standard of life to the simplest possible, the
contentment of inertia or stable equilibrium. There are animals which
are very highly differentiated and active in their young state, but
later lose their complex organisation and concentrate themselves on
the one function of nutrition. In the human world analogies to this
sort of adaptation are not wanting. Young "idealists" very often end
as old "Philistines." Adaptation and progress are not the same.
Another question of great importance in respect to human evolution is,
whether there will be always a possibility for the existence of an
impulse to progress, an impulse to make great claims on life, to be
active and to alter the conditions of life instead of adapting to them
in a passive manner. Many people do not develop because they have too
few necessities, and because they have no power to imagine other
conditions of life than those under which they live. In his remarks on
"the pleasure from exertion" Darwin has a point of contact with the
practical idealism of former times--with the ideas of Lessing and
Goethe, of Condorcet and Fichte. The continual striving which was the
condition of salvation to Faust's soul, is also the condition of
salvation to mankind. There is a holy fire which we ought to keep
burning, if adaptation is really to be improvement. If, as I have
tried to show in my _Philosophy of Religion_, the innermost core of
all religion is faith in the persistence of value in the world, and if
the highest values express themselves in the cry "Excelsior!" then the
capital point is, that this cry should always be heard and followed.
We have here a corollary of the theory of evolution in its application
to human life.
Darwin declared himself an agnostic, not only because he could not
harmonise the large amount of suffering in the world with the idea of
a God as its first cause, but also because he "was aware that if we
admit a first cause, the mind still craves to know whence it came and
how it arose."[216] He saw, as Kant had seen before him and expressed
in his _Kritik der Urtheilskraft_, that we cannot accept either of the
only two possibilities which we are able to conceive: chance (or brute
force) and design. Neither mechanism nor teleology can give an
absolute answer to ultimate questions. The universe, and especially
the organic life in it, can neither be explained as a mere
combination of absolute elements nor as the effect of a constructing
thought. Darwin concluded, as Kant, and before him Spinoza, that the
oppositions and distinctions which our experience presents, cannot
safely be regarded as valid for existence in itself. And, with Kant
and Fichte, he found his stronghold in the conviction that man has
something to do, even if he cannot solve all enigmas. "The safest
conclusion seems to me that the whole subject is beyond the scope of
man's intellect; but man can do his duty."[217]
Is this the last word of human thought? Does not the possibility, that
man can do his duty, suppose that the conditions of life allow of
continuous ethical striving, so that there is a certain harmony
between cosmic order and human ideals? Darwin himself has shown how
the consciousness of duty can arise as a natural result of evolution.
Moreover there are lines of evolution which have their end in ethical
idealism, in a kingdom of values, which must struggle for life as all
things in the world must do, but a kingdom which has its firm
foundation in reality.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 195: _Life and Letters of Charles Darwin_, Vol. I. p. 8.]
[Footnote 196: _Encyclopaedie der philosophischen Wissenschaften_ (4th
edit.), Berlin, 1845, Sec. 249.]
[Footnote 197: _Lehrbuch der Naturphilosophie_, Jena, 1809.]
[Footnote 198: _Ueber den Willen in der Natur_ (2nd edit.), Frankfurt
a. M., 1854, pp. 41-43.]
[Footnote 199: Spencer, _Autobiography_, Vol. II. p. 50, London and
New York, 1904.]
[Footnote 200: _Autobiography_, Vol. II. p. 100.]
[Footnote 201: Cf. my letter to him 1876, now printed in Duncan's
_Life and Letters of Herbert Spencer_, p. 178. London, 1908.]
[Footnote 202: The present writer, many years ago, in his _Psychology_
(Copenhagen, 1882; Eng. transl. London, 1891), criticised the
evolutionistic treatment of the problem of knowledge from the Kantian
point of view.]
[Footnote 203: _Life and Letters_, Vol. II. p. 37.]
[Footnote 204: _Ibid._ p. 232.]
[Footnote 205: The new science of Ecology occupies an intermediate
position between the biography of species and the biography of
individuals. Compare _Congress of Arts and Science_, St. Louis, Vol.
V. 1906 (The Reports of Drude and Robinson) and the work of my
colleague, E. Warming.]
[Footnote 206: Cf. my _History of Modern Philosophy_ (Eng. transl.
London, 1900), I. pp. 76-79.]
[Footnote 207: "Herrschaft und Knechtschaft," _Phoenomenologie des
Geistes_, IV. A., Leiden, 1907.]
[Footnote 208: _The Descent of Man_, Vol. I. Ch. iii.]
[Footnote 209: The works of Westermarck and Hobhouse throw new light
on many of these features.]
[Footnote 210: New York and London, 1893.]
[Footnote 211: Paris, 1879.]
[Footnote 212: _English literature and society in the eighteenth
century_, London, 1904, p. 187.]
[Footnote 213: Cf. my paper, "The law of relativity in Ethics,"
_International Journal of Ethics_, Vol. I. 1891, pp. 37-62.]
[Footnote 214: _Life and Letters_, Vol. I. p. 310.]
[Footnote 215: _Ibid._ Vol. II. p. 177.]
[Footnote 216: _Life and Letters_, Vol. 1. p. 306.]
[Footnote 217: _Life and Letters_, p. 307.]
VIII
THE INFLUENCE OF DARWIN UPON RELIGIOUS THOUGHT
BY P. N. WAGGETT, M.A., S.S.J.E.
I
The object of this paper is first to point out certain elements of the
Darwinian influence upon Religious thought, and then to show reason
for the conclusion that it has been, from a Christian point of view,
satisfactory. I shall not proceed further to urge that the Christian
apologetic in relation to biology has been successful. A variety of
opinions may be held on this question, without disturbing the
conclusion that the movements of readjustment have been beneficial to
those who remain Christians, and this by making them more Christian
and not only more liberal. The theologians may sometimes have
retreated, but there has been an advance of theology. I know that this
account incurs the charge of optimism. It is not the worst that could
be made. The influence has been limited in personal range, unequal,
even divergent, in operation, and accompanied by the appearance of
waste and mischievous products. The estimate which follows requires
for due balance a full development of many qualifying considerations.
For this I lack space, but I must at least distinguish my view from
the popular one that our difficulties about religion and natural
science have come to an end.