The naturalists and the sociologists have contributed to spread
this idea that moral progress is, for individuals, a function of
the anatomical complex, and for societies of the complex of habits,
institutions and industries. It is on this understanding that they have
undertaken the classification of species and arranged the various
human hierarchies.
That is a view entirely external to things, it cannot be verified
as regards individual thought, it is a sheer fabrication as regards
collectivities: the war is a bloody refutation of it.
If we mean by moral progress that which affects the conditions of
happiness, nothing permits us to conjecture what advantages have been
realized in this direction by the vegetable and animal organisms that
have not chosen us as confidents. Habits, as we observe them, cannot be
a criterion, even if we admit that we ought to seek for evidence among
them; they seem as if designed to baffle all theories.
Those animals whose anatomical structure closely resembles ours, not
to say that it is exactly analogous to ours, such as cattle and sheep,
give proof of a moral activity that is insignificant beside the real
genius shown by the bee and so many other insects whose nervous systems
are still rudimentary in comparison with those of the mammals.
Certain sea animals, the barnacles, have suffered, because of their
sedentary existence, an anatomical regression. We know that the mobile
larvæ of the barnacles possess more complicated organisms than those
of the adult and stationary animal. To conclude from that that this
anatomical regression is a lowering of the species is to assume a great
deal, and it is to accord to movement a very debatable significance.
There exist species of plant life, especially among the conifers
and the ferns, which, for thousands of centuries, seem to have
remained in an almost stable anatomical and functional stage. These
species are none the less very widely scattered and very long-lived,
very adaptable. They offer an outward appearance of happiness and
prosperity. On the other hand, nothing permits us to affirm that
certain species, like the orchids, which have undergone a delirious
evolution resulting in forms of extreme anatomical complexity, have
attained a true progress, have improved, that is to say, their moral
destiny: we see them subject to innumerable external servitudes. Their
reproduction, even, is only possible thanks to the intervention of
outside agencies and is fraught with perils. A seductive argument that
smacks of anthropomorphism inclines us to believe that these species,
intoxicated with their material difficulties, ought to have a less free
and less serene philosophical existence.
The complexity of the individual organism, which corresponds strictly
to the political, economic and scientific complexity of societies, adds
neither to the possibilities of life, nor to its scope of activity, nor
to its hopes.
Certain fish, the pleuronectes, have sought their salvation in a very
bold, precocious development that ends in a displacement of their
eyes, of their mouth and in a profound disorder of their original
symmetry. Looking at them, one has the impression that this development
has thrown them into an impasse, into a _cul-de-sac_ from which it
would be difficult for them to escape into a new evolution; one has
the impression that this whole biological stratagem has considerably
restricted the destiny of the species.
Besides, and the naturalists know it very well, the species that are
most highly evolved, most differentiated, to employ the consecrated
expression, are in a certain sense the oldest species, imprisoned
in their own tradition and scarcely to be counted upon for a new
adaptation, a profound reformation of their organs and their habits.