IX

_How the Evolution of Senses expands the World_

The whole progression of life upon the globe, in so far as it has been

achieved through natural selection, has consisted in the preservation

and the propagation of those living creatures in whom the adjustment of

inner relations to outer relations is most successful. This is only a

more detailed and descriptive way of saying that natural selection is

equivalent to survival of the fittest. The shapes of animals, as well as

their capacities, have been evolved through almost infinitely slow

increments of adjustment upon adjustment. In this way, for instance, has

been evolved the vertebrate skeleton, through a process of which

Spencer's wonderful analysis is as thrilling as a poem. Or consider the

development of the special organs of sense. Among the most startling

disclosures of embryology are those which relate to this subject. The

most perfect organs of touch are the _vibrissŠ_ whiskers of the cat,

which act as long levers in communicating impulses to the nerve-fibres

that terminate in clusters about the dermal sacs in which they are

inserted. These cat-whiskers are merely specialized forms of such hairs

as those which cover the bodies of most mammals, and which remain in

evanescent shape upon the human skin imbedded in minute sacs. Now in

their origin the eye and ear are identical with _vibrissŠ_. In the early

stages of vertebrate life, while the differentiations of dermal tissue

went mostly to the production of hairs or feathers or scales, sundry

special differentiations went to the production of ears and eyes.

Embryology shows that in mammals the bulb of the eye and the auditory

chamber are extremely metamorphosed hair-sacs, the crystalline lens is a

differentiated hair, and the aqueous and vitreous humours are liquefied

dermal tissue! The implication of these wonderful facts is that sight

and hearing were slowly differentiated from the sense of touch. One can

seem to discern how in the history of the eye there was at first a

concentration of pigment grains in a particular dermal sac, making that

spot exceptionally sensitive to light; then came by slow degrees the

heightened translucence, the convexity of surface, the refracting

humours, and the multiplication of nerve-vesicles arranging themselves

as retinal rods. And what was the result of all this for the creature in

whom organs of vision were thus developed? There was an immense

extension of the range, complexity, and definiteness of the adjustment

of inner relations to outer relations; in other words, there was an

immense increase of life. There came into existence, moreover, for those

with eyes to see it, a mighty visible world that for sightless creatures

had been virtually non-existent.

With the further progress of organic life, the high development of the

senses was attended or followed by increase of brain development and the

correlative intelligence, immeasurably enlarging the scope of the

correspondences between the living creature and the outer world. In the

case of Man, the adjustments by which we meet the exigencies of life

from day to day are largely psychical, achieved by the aid of ideal

representations of environing circumstances. Our actions are guided by

our theory of the situation, and it needs no illustration to show us

that a true theory is an adjustment of one's ideas to the external

facts, and that such adjustments are helps to successful living. The

whole worth of education is directed toward cultivating the capacity of

framing associations of ideas that conform to objective facts. It is

thus that life is guided.

[Illustration]

X

_Nature's Eternal Lesson is the Everlasting Reality of Religion_

So as we look back over the marvellous life-history of our planet, even

from the dull time when there was no life more exalted than that of

conferva scum on the surface of a pool, through ages innumerable until

the present time when Man is learning how to decipher Nature's secrets,

we look back over an infinitely slow series of minute adjustments,

gradually and laboriously increasing the points of contact between the

inner Life and the World environing. Step by step in the upward advance

toward Humanity the environment has enlarged. The world of the

fresh-water alga was its tiny pool during its brief term of existence;

the world of civilized man comprehends the stellar universe during

countless Šons of time. Every stage of enlargement has had reference to

actual existences outside. The eye was developed in response to the

outward existence of radiant light, the ear in response to the outward

existence of acoustic vibrations, the mother's love came in response to

the infant's needs, fidelity and honour were slowly developed as the

nascent social life required them; everywhere the internal adjustment

has been brought about so as to harmonize with some actually existing

external fact. Such has been Nature's method, such is the deepest law of

life that science has been able to detect.

Now there was a critical moment in the history of our planet, when love

was beginning to play a part hitherto unknown, when notions of right and

wrong were germinating in the nascent Human Soul, when the family was

coming into existence, when social ties were beginning to be knit, when

winged words first took their flight through the air. It was the moment

when the process of evolution was being shifted to a higher plane, when

civilization was to be superadded to organic evolution, when the last

and highest of creatures was coming upon the scene, when the dramatic

purpose of creation was approaching fulfilment. At that critical moment

we see the nascent Human Soul vaguely reaching forth toward something

akin to itself not in the realm of fleeting phenomena but in the Eternal

Presence beyond. An internal adjustment of ideas was achieved in

correspondence with an Unseen World. That the ideas were very crude and

childlike, that they were put together with all manner of grotesqueness,

is what might be expected. The cardinal fact is that the crude childlike

mind was groping to put itself into relation with an ethical world not

visible to the senses. And one aspect of this fact, not to be lightly

passed over, is the fact that Religion, thus ushered upon the scene

coeval with the birth of Humanity, has played such a dominant part in

the subsequent evolution of human society that what history would be

without it is quite beyond imagination. As to the dimensions of this

cardinal fact there can thus be no question. None can deny that it is

the largest and most ubiquitous fact connected with the existence of

mankind upon the earth.

Now if the relation thus established in the morning twilight of Man's

existence between the Human Soul and a world invisible and immaterial is

a relation of which only the subjective term is real and the objective

term is non-existent, then, I say, it is something utterly without

precedent in the whole history of creation. All the analogies of

Evolution, so far as we have yet been able to decipher it, are

overwhelming against any such supposition. To suppose that during

countless ages, from the seaweed up to Man, the progress of life was

achieved through adjustments to external realities, but that then the

method was all at once changed and throughout a vast province of

evolution the end was secured through adjustments to external

non-realities, is to do sheer violence to logic and to common sense. Or,

to vary the form of statement, since every adjustment whereby any

creature sustains life may be called a true step, and every

maladjustment whereby life is wrecked may be called a false step; if we

are asked to believe that Nature, after having throughout the whole

round of her inferior products achieved results through the accumulation

of all true steps and pitiless rejection of all false steps, suddenly

changed her method and in the case of her highest product began

achieving results through the accumulation of false steps; I say we are

entitled to resent such a suggestion as an insult to our understandings.

All the analogies of Nature fairly shout against the assumption of such

a breach of continuity between the evolution of Man and all previous

evolution. So far as our knowledge of Nature goes the whole momentum of

it carries us onward to the conclusion that the Unseen World, as the

objective term in a relation of fundamental importance that has

coexisted with the whole career of Mankind, has a real existence; and it

is but following out the analogy to regard that Unseen World as the

theatre where the ethical process is destined to reach its full

consummation. The lesson of evolution is that through all these weary

ages the Human Soul has not been cherishing in Religion a delusive

phantom, but in spite of seemingly endless groping and stumbling it has

been rising to the recognition of its essential kinship with the

ever-living God. Of all the implications of the doctrine of evolution

with regard to Man, I believe the very deepest and strongest to be that

which asserts the Everlasting Reality of Religion.

So far as I am aware, the foregoing argument is here advanced for the

first time. It does not pretend to meet the requirements of scientific

demonstration. One must not look for scientific demonstration in

problems that contain so many factors transcending our direct

experience. But as an appeal to our common sense, the argument here

brought forward surely has tremendous weight. It seems to me far more

convincing than any chain of subtle metaphysical reasoning can ever be;

for such chains, however, invincible in appearance, are no stronger than

the weakest of their links, and in metaphysics one is always uneasily

suspecting some undetected flaw. My argument represents the impression

that is irresistibly forced upon one by a broad general familiarity with

Nature's processes and methods; it therefore belongs to the class of

arguments that survive.

Observe, too, that it is far from being a modified repetition of the old

argument that beliefs universally accepted must be true. Upon the view

here presented, every specific opinion ever entertained by man

respecting religious things may be wrong, and in all probability is

exceedingly crude, and yet the Everlasting Reality of Religion, in its

three indispensable elements as here set forth, remains unassailable.

Our common-sense argument puts the scientific presumption entirely and

decisively on the side of religion and against all atheistic and

materialistic explanations of the universe. It establishes harmony

between our highest knowledge and our highest aspirations by showing

that the latter no less than the former are a normal result of the

universal cosmic process. It has nothing to fear from the advance of

scientific discovery, for as these things come to be better understood,

it is going to be realized that the days of the antagonism between

Science and Religion must by and by come to an end. That antagonism has

been chiefly due to the fact that religious ideas were until lately

allied with the doctrine of special creations. They have therefore

needed to be remodelled and considered from new points of view. But we

have at length reached a stage where it is becoming daily more and more

apparent that with the deeper study of Nature the old strife between

faith and knowledge is drawing to a close; and disentangled at last from

that ancient slough of despond the Human Mind will breathe a freer air

and enjoy a vastly extended horizon.

[Illustration]