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. ("Life and
Letters" Vol. I. page 310.)
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." (Ibid. Vol. II.
page 177.) 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." ("Life and Letters", Vol. I. page 306.) 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." (Ibid. page 307.)
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.