cannot know, whether it is an illusion or not. In reply we may either
admit that all our knowledge--scientific, moral, and religious--is based
not on knowledge, but on faith; or we may ask on what grounds this
alleged impossibility is based. If we put that question, we shall find
that the grounds are not altogether cogent. It is alleged to be equally
impossible for the human mind to conceive either the existence or the
non-existence of a necessity antecedent to the absolute beginning of
things: therefore, in face of this inherent incapacity of the human
mind, the truth about the beginning of things is unknowable and
inconceivable. But, we venture to suggest, this alleged incapacity of
the human mind rests on a false antithesis: it rests on the assumption
that whatever phase of the evolution process we regard as the initial
arrangement must either have been determined by some prior phase (in
which case it was not initial) or not determined at all. But as a mere
matter of logic, there remains the possibility that it may have been
self-determined; and, as regards the evidence of experience, we are
familiar with a cause which operates every day and which is
self-determined, viz. the free will. There is, therefore, no such
inherent incapacity in the human mind as is alleged; and the only
inconceivability is that which is inherent in the theory of antecedent
necessity, and not in the facts themselves. It is simply incorrect to
say that if things cannot be explained by the theory of antecedent
necessity, they are not capable of being explained at all. If the
evolution process had been designed to follow the course it has
followed, the initial arrangement of things could not have been better
adapted to produce the result; and, as adaptation of means to end is the
mark of intelligence, it is neither inconceivable nor irrational to
suppose that purpose was immanent in things from the beginning.
But as it is scientific to argue from the known to the unknown, or from
the better known to the less known; and as to know fully what a thing is
we must know what it is capable of becoming or producing, let us pass
from the pre-animal to the animal stage of evolution. It is the more
necessary to do this because it was Darwin's theory of the origin of
species which impressed upon the modern mind the idea that Nature mimics
purpose, having none. Man, with the purpose of breeding a certain type
of animal, selects those animals to breed from which possess, in the
most marked degree, the characteristics which he wishes to develop in
the offspring. But, as Darwin demonstrated, Nature, or the environment,
by killing off those creatures which did not possess (or least
possessed) the qualities necessary to ensure survival, "selects" animals
of a certain type to breed from. Thus "natural selection" produces its
results in the same way as human selection does; and presents every
appearance of purpose, though the environment which produced the results
could have had no intentions or purpose at all. But just as man does not
create the animals which he first selects to breed from, so the
environment does not create those sports or varieties which it selects
to breed from: if they did not exist, neither man nor Nature could breed
from them--no results, purposed or unpurposed, could be got from them.
If now we inquire about these sports, we are told science is content
with the fact that they undeniably occur: wherever there are animals
there are varieties in their offspring. That those which are adapted to
survive will survive, and those which are not will not, is a
self-evident, indeed an identical, proposition. It is; and it gives away
the whole case against purpose, for it admits that some varieties are
originally adapted to survive, that without them neither man nor the
environment would have anything to begin on or work on, and that though
man and Nature may develop, they do not create the original adaptation.
They do but promote, by conscious or unconscious action, the purpose
immanent in the sport. Of all the numerous, successive, imperceptible
increments by which what was originally a sport is raised to a distinct
species, not one is created by man or by the environment: all are the
"gratuitous offerings" of the organism, manifestations of the organism's
spontaneity, revelations of its latent capacities, fulfilments of the
purpose immanent in it from the beginning.
If it be said that the survival of any or every given species was a
matter of chance, because other sports would have developed into other
species, if the environment had been different, the reply again is, But
it was not; and, on the theory of necessity, could not be. The fact that
both conditions--the organism's spontaneity and the environment's
selective agency--were requisite to the production of the new species,
and that both conditions were forthcoming, tells rather in favour of
purpose than against it. The fact that this particular combination of
conditions was effected, rather than any other, is on exactly the same
footing as the initial concurrence of atoms: if the latter cannot be
ascribed to any necessity antecedent to it, neither can the former; the
reason of the combination is to be sought in the self-determining cause
immanent in the conditions. The fact, if it be a fact, that countless
other combinations were possible, and this alone was chosen, shows that
the will immanent in the evolution process is free will.
In fine, Darwin has shown that the action of the environment is exactly
what it would have been had it been designed for the purpose of
selecting certain sports for development. All that is further necessary
in order to show that this apparent purpose is an illusion, is to prove
that the environment was not designed to act as it does. Pending the
production of that proof, the argument remains incomplete.
The larger part of the process of evolution is known to us only from the
outside: we observe its effects in the animal world and in inorganic
nature, but its inner workings we have to reach by inference. One part
of the evolution process, however, we know from the inside--that part
which is carried on through us. We are some of the innumerable channels
through which the motive force of the process is transmitted; and the
knowledge which its transmission through us gives us is more intimate
and direct than that which we get from observing the external effects it
produces elsewhere. The evolution of society, for instance, is a part of
the general process of evolution, and is a process which is carried on
through us and expresses the resultant of the totality of our
sentiments and actions towards one another. What light, then, if any, is
thrown by sociology on the general question of purpose?
Mr. Herbert Spencer has familiarised us with the lesson that in politics
and social experiments it is the unforeseen and unintended results of
legislation which are far the most important, and that the industrial
organisation of the country, or we may now say of the world, is not the
fulfilment of any design preconceived by any governmental agency, but
the unintended result of innumerable actions on the part of men who
never dreamed that their action would have any such outcome. The reason
of this is to be sought in the fact that society is an organism and that
its growth follows the same laws as those which regulate the structural
development of an amœba or a rhizopod. Thus, both society and the
animal organism must be fed. To be fed, both must appropriate nutriment
from the environment. That nutriment must be taken up and must be
distributed to all parts of the organism, social or animal, if all parts
are to be fed--and all must be fed, because all are mutually dependent,
and to neglect one would disorganise the whole. Channels of
communication must be established between all parts, in order that food
may be conveyed from the organ which took it from the environment to the
organs which require it for support. What marks the process of
evolution in both cases is the increasing division of labour and the
increasing interdependence of the parts on one another. The animal
organism, like the social organism, is made up of a multitude of living
units, each one of which is continually adjusting itself to the
requirements of all the rest. The increasing complexity in the structure
of an animal organism is possible only because the living units of one
part take upon themselves new functions, or devote themselves
exclusively to one function, in order to benefit the units of a distant
part. If they purposed or were purposed to produce that result, they
could not behave differently or better. But this appearance of purpose
is mere semblance: the minute cells of an animal organism have no
intention of producing even a rhizopod or an amœba. The explanation
of this mimicry of purpose lies in the fact of the mutual
interdependence of the parts: no change can take place in one organ of
society or of the animal without being transmitted through the whole,
just as you cannot remove one of the undermost of a cartload of bricks
without more or less disturbing all the rest. But what is true of the
bricks or of the units of the animal organism is true of the units of
the social organism: what we discover in their action and reaction on
one another is the operation, not of voluntary purpose, but of
invariable laws of cause and effect.
According to this argument, then, the living units of the animal
organism resemble in their action those of the social organism
sufficiently to warrant us in arguing from the one to the other, and in
concluding that there is purpose in the action of neither. But it is
obvious that, if the resemblance is great enough to justify us in
arguing from the animal to the social organism, it also opens the way
for the argument to travel the return journey, from the social organism
to the animal, and to reach the conclusion that there is purpose in
both. Let us therefore consider what each of these two opposite
conclusions requires us to believe.
On the one hand, before accepting the argument that there is no purpose
in the action of the social organism because there is none in that of
the animal, we must prove that there is none in that of the animal. But
that, as we have already urged, is exactly what has not been proved: the
utmost that science claims to prove is that the units of the animal
organism do behave in a certain way. That way is exactly the way in
which they would behave if they were designed to do so; and science
leaves it, so far, a perfectly open question whether they were or were
not so designed. The argument, therefore, that there is no purpose in
the action of the social organism, because none in the animal, breaks
down at the threshold. Yet it is on the unproved and unprovable
assertion that the appearance of purpose in the animal organism cannot
possibly be due to design, and must therefore be a delusion, that we
are expected to deny the evidence of our own experience and
consciousness and to believe that we, the units of the social organism,
have no purpose in the daily acts by which we extend trade or discharge
our social functions.
Thus the surmise that Nature mimics purpose, having none, is a
conjecture which, so far as it is applied to the pre-human stages of the
evolution process, simply plays upon our ignorance; and which, when
applied to that part of the evolution process which is carried on
through us, we know to be absurd. On the other hand, if there is such
similarity between the laws of the one part of the process and the laws
of the other part, it must be as allowable to argue from the part and
the laws which we do know to the part and the laws that we do not know,
as it is to explain the known by what is confessedly unknown. In other
words, if the evolution of the social organism is known to be due to
purpose, then it is a reasonable inference that animal evolution, which,
we are told, follows the same line and laws, is due also to purpose--and
if not to any purpose entertained by the cells of the animal organism,
then to that of a Will of which their action is the expression.
It is, however, maintained that the continuous social changes which
constitute the evolution of society, so far from being the result of the
purpose of any individual or of any government, are frequently the very
opposite of what was intended by the authors of the changes, and always
are notoriously beyond our power to forecast. But the fact that my plans
are modified or diverted by my successors or by my coadjutors does not
prove that there was no purpose in my plans, or that there was none in
the modifications introduced by my successors. And the total result of
our united action and purposes may be something different from what any
of us individually intended and yet express a common purpose, which is
shown by the result to have been more or less present to all of us. A
cathedral begun in the Norman style may have taken generations to build
and may end in Gothic; and it will express the ideas common to the
several builders, in much the same way that a composite photograph
reproduces most distinctly the features in which all the persons
photographed coincide, and other features more or less distinctly
according to the extent to which they are shared in common by the
different subjects. Or, to express the effect of the successive actions
of succeeding generations, we may borrow an illustration from the game
of chess. It is possible for five players to play, taking it in turns to
move, so that every player makes one move out of five, and plays
alternately for White and Black. The result, with good players, is a
brilliant and well-developed game, which is not the game as purposed or
intended by any one of the five players, but as continually modified
and improved by each every time that he took it up. When, then, we
reflect how many players in the game of life there are even in a small
society, we can well understand that, though each has his own way of
serving the common purpose, none can forecast the result.
Perhaps it will be said that the chess-players have a common purpose,
and the players in life's game have none. The reply is that science
assumes they have; science assumes that they play to win in the struggle
for existence; and only on the assumption that men have common purposes
is it possible to frame any scientific account of their actions. The
science of Political Economy assumes that it is a common purpose of men
to acquire wealth, and that their actions are determined by that
purpose. It then goes on to show that if that is their purpose, then the
conditions under which it can be and is effected are of a certain kind,
_e.g._ men must buy in the cheapest and sell in the dearest market. It
is not necessary to assume, nor does Political Economy assume, that man
can only purpose to acquire wealth, or that he must under all
circumstances do so. In the same way it is wholly unscientific in
sociology to assume that success in the struggle for existence is either
a thing that man must aim at, or the only thing that he can aim at: the
soldier dies for his country, the martyr for his faith. The
institutions of a nation--legal, political, social, and
religious--express the predominant purposes for which successive
generations of the community have laboured; and the evolution of mankind
is the history of the various degrees of success with which men have
realised the ideals which they have purposed to attain. The successive
reforms by which progress has been effected have all been purposed, and
have all been purposed by men who believed, rightly or wrongly, that in
so doing they were serving God and their fellow-men, and that the ideals
of truth, justice, equality, fraternity, love, compassion, and mercy
express God's will and the Divine purpose.
If, then, the outcome of the pre-human period of evolution has been, as
a matter of fact, and amongst other things, such as to prepare the earth
for man's habitation and to provide him with a mechanism, physiological
and psychological, such that he can use it, if he will, to promote what
he considers to be progress and advance, it is not unreasonable for him
to regard past phases of evolution as so many steps leading to the
realisation of the ideals which he cherishes, in his best moments, as
his highest purposes. The continuity of evolution and the unity of its
process authorise or even compel him to use that part of the process
which is carried on through him as a means to interpret the rest. As, in
the game of chess played by five players, each player inherits from his
predecessor the game as it stands, and carries on, with improvements or
modifications, the scheme which he inherits, so in life each player in
turn becomes conscious of the ideals which he too may, or may not, as he
wills, carry one step nearer to their goal. It is in the continuity with
which these ideals are transmitted through one consciousness after
another that the continuity of human evolution consists. We are, or may
be if we choose, particles in the medium by which a purpose not our own
(save inasmuch as we choose to make it so) is carried onwards to its
destination. The medium through which progress has travelled in the past
is Nature; the medium through which it is now travelling is human
nature. By us the ideal, as it is transmitted through our consciousness,
is recognised as implying the presence in us of a purpose higher than
our own. Whether in the medium of Nature there is any dim consciousness
of the progress towards which the changes in Nature conspire, we know
not. But the uniformity of Nature and human nature requires us to see in
those natural changes the operation of the same power travelling in the
same direction as it does through us. In its passage through us it is
made known to us as the object of our highest aspirations; the ideal of
purity, of holiness, and love; the God for whom the human heart,
mistakenly or not, has always sought, and never sought in vain.
XIV.
CONCLUSION
The Pessimistic interpretation of evolution has taught us the lesson
that, if we start without belief in the Divine government of the world,
study of the process of evolution will not lead us to discern any Divine
purpose in the process. Belief in religion cannot begin without faith in
God to start with, just as belief in science or in morality is based not
on evidence, but on faith. The question remains whether with faith we
can believe that the process of evolution is a revelation of Divine
love, and whether man's environment has been evolved in such a way as to
promote in him that love of his fellow-man and God which is the
religious ideal.
If we look at the structure of society, we see it is based on the fact
that man has certain needs--of food, shelter, and clothing, etc.--which
can be satisfied more effectually by co-operation and division of labour
than by isolated, individual action. The man who earns his own living
does so by rendering services for which he is paid: he cannot benefit
himself without benefiting others to some extent. That is the law under
which he lives, a law not of his own making, nor always to his own
liking, but a law inherent in the nature of things, and part of the
purpose, if purpose there be, in the scheme of things. As a free agent,
man may co-operate with his fellows and take his share of the divided
labour, or not, as he wills; but those peoples which have carried the
principles of co-operation and organisation furthest have fared best.
They have availed themselves of the opportunity offered them, and have
survived. The failure of the rest to do likewise has not impeded the
fulfilment of the Divine purpose that men should help one another. On
the contrary, those who decline to help one another voluntarily place
themselves at a disadvantage in the struggle for existence, and are
slowly, but surely, crowded out by those who fulfil the Divine purpose
less unsatisfactorily, and in consequence tend to inherit the earth.
We have already seen that when a man reaches years of discretion he
finds that the physiological and psychological mechanism of which he is
now in possession, and for the management of which he is henceforth
responsible, has a tendency to run in certain grooves: he has, as a
child, been taught and has inherited an aptitude to think and act in
certain ways. The same remark applies to the social organism. Before or
when the individual awakes to the fact that he is a member of a society,
he has already been or is the child of parents to whom he renders
obedience, and between whom and himself there exist relations of
affection. The evolution of man as a purely animal organism has been
such that he begins life with a prolonged period of helpless infancy.
Unlike the lower animals, which very soon after birth are capable of
providing for themselves, he is for years dependent on others. His
prolonged infancy is a prolonged period of plasticity, during which he
is moulded into a member, first of a family and then and thereby into a
member of society. All the higher animals give their offspring some
education, an education as good as they received themselves: in the
human race alone do parents give their children a better education than
they got themselves. It is, however, not the rising generation alone who
benefit by the long period of dependence and plasticity which
characterises childhood. It is, of course, true that labour expended on
the perfecting of tools and machinery is peculiarly productive, inasmuch
as the increased efficiency of the instrument more than repays the
greater outlay. But as the workman who produces the tool becomes in
consequence of his labour a more skilled mechanic, so the education
given by the parent to the child is an education not only of the child,
but of the parent, and makes both better fitted to be members of
society. It not only secures that subordination of the younger men to
the elder, which is necessary for the stability of society and the
permanence of the tribe, but it also tempers power with responsibility,
responsibility not to some external authority, but to the higher
principle within the man.
Thus even in the earliest stage of society the anti-social forces of
selfishness and the passions do not operate _in vacuo_ and with nothing
to impede them. Society at the very beginning is no _tabula rasa_: the
field is already largely occupied, and the direction of social evolution
already largely determined, by that affection between parents and
children without which neither society as a whole nor the individual as
a unit could come into being or continue to exist. It is an
unwarrantable libel, even on savage society, to say that in it the ape
and tiger predominate in man: the lowest forms of society survive only
so far as there exists more humanity than brutality in the dealings of
their members with one another. It is a false philosophy of evolution,
not a true acquaintance with the facts of anthropology, which rashly
assumes that the morally lowest must have been the only primitive
elements in the evolution of humanity. The evil and the good in man have
existed side by side from the beginning; unselfish affection, as well as
selfish desires, has always been part of the equipment of human nature,
though the evolution of the former may be a longer and more difficult
process, both in the individual and the race, than the evolution of the
latter.