NATURAL SELECTION AND ENVIRONMENT
I have attempted to show that animal development has not been an
aimless drifting. Functions developed and organs arose and were
perfected in a certain order. First the purely vegetative organs
appeared, and the animal lived for digestion and reproduction; then
came muscle and it brought with it nerve. But these were not enough;
the brain had all the time been gradually improving, and now it
becomes the dominant function to which all others are subordinated.
The experiment was fairly tried. Mere digestion and reproduction are
carried to about the highest perfection which can be expected of
them in worms and mollusks. The bird tried what could be done with
digestion ministering to locomotion guided by the very keenest
sense-organs and controlled by no mean brain. Even this experiment
was not a success. But one organ remained, the brain, and on its
mental possibilities depend the future of the animal kingdom.
Vegetative organs and muscle have been tried and found wanting.[1]
[Footnote 1: See chart, p. 310.]
We have followed hastily the development of mind. The mind began its
career as the servant of digestion, recognizing and aiding to attain
food. Action is at first mainly reflex. But conscious perception
plays an ever more important part. The animal is at first guided by
natural selection through the survival of the most suitable reflex
actions, then by inherited tendencies, finally by its own conscious
intelligence and will. The first motives are the appetites, but
these are succeeded by ever higher motives as the perceptions become
clearer and more subtile relations in environment are taken into
account. Governed first purely by appetites, the will is ever more
influenced by prudential considerations, and finally shows
well-developed "natural affections." It has set its face toward
unselfishness.
Digestion and muscle, as well as mind, have persisted in man. He is
not, cannot be, disembodied spirit. And in his mental life reflex
action and instinct, appetite and prudence, are still of great
importance. But the higher and supreme development of these powers
could never have resulted in man. They might alone have produced a
superior animal, never man. His mammalian structure found its
logical and natural goal in family and social life. And even the
lowest goal of family life is incompatible with pure selfishness,
and as family life advanced to an ever higher grade it became the
school of unselfishness and love. And social life had a similar
effect.
Moreover, man as a social being early began to learn that he could
claim something from his fellows, and that he owed something to
them. If he refused to help others, they would refuse to help him.
This was his first, very rude lesson in rights and duties. Love,
duty, and right have ever since been the watchwords of his
development and progress. We have not yet considered, and must for
the present disregard, the value and efficiency of religion in
aiding his advance. At present we emphasize only the historical
fact that man has not become what he is by a higher development of
the body, nor by giving free rein to appetite, nor yet by making the
dictates of selfish prudence supreme. And if there is any such thing
as continuity in history, such modes and aims of life, if now
followed, would surely only brutalize him and plunge him headlong in
degeneration. He must live for right, truth, love, and duty. In just
so far as he makes any other aim in life supreme, or allows it to
even rival these, he is sinking into brutality. This is the clear,
unmistakable verdict of history, and we shall do well to heed it.
But granting all that can be claimed for this sequence, have not the
lower forms whose anatomy we have sketched--worm, fish, and
bird--halted at various points along this line of march? Yet they
have evidently survived. And if they have found safe resting-places,
cannot higher forms turn back and join them? In other words, is not
degeneration easier than advance and just as safe? What is the
result if an animal tries to return to a lower plane of life or
refuses to take the next upward step? Generally extermination. The
very classification of worms in a number of small isolated groups,
which must once have been connected by a host of intermediate forms,
is indisputable proof of most terrible extermination. They did not
go forward, and the survivors are but an infinitesimal fraction of
those which perished. Let us take an illustration where palæontology
can help us. The earth was at one time covered with marsupial
mammals. Some advanced into placental forms. The great mass remained
behind. And outside of Australia the opossums are the only survivors
of them all. And this is only one example where a thousand could be
given. Place is not long reserved for mere cumberers of the ground.
There are so few exceptions to this statement that we might almost
call it a law of biology.
Let us see how it fares with an animal which retreats to a lower
plane of life. A worm, rather than seek its own food, becomes a
parasite. It degenerates, but still is easily recognized as a worm.
A crustacean tries the same experiment, though living outside of its
host instead of in it. It sinks to a place even lower, if possible,
than that of the parasitic worm. A locomotive form becomes sessile.
It loses most of its muscles and the larger part of its nervous
system; and even the digestive system, which it has made the goal of
its existence, is inferior to that of its locomotive ancestors and
relatives. But to the vertebrate these lowest depths of stagnation
and degeneration are, as a rule, impossible. From true fish upward
parasitism and sessile life are practically impossible. Here
stagnation and degeneration mean, as a rule, extinction. Of all the
relatives of vertebrates back to worms only the very aberrant lines
of amphioxus and of the tunicata remain. Of the rest not a single
survivor has yet been discovered. And yet what hosts of species must
have peopled the sea. The primitive round-mouthed fishes have
practically disappeared. The ganoids survive in a few species out of
thousands. The amphibia of the carboniferous and the next period and
the reptiles of the mesozoic have disappeared; only a few feeble
degenerate remnants persist. And this was necessarily so. Each
advancing form crowded hardest on those which occupied the same
place and sought the same food, that is, the members of the same
species. And the first to suffer from its competition were its own
brethren. Death, rarely commuted into life imprisonment, is the
verdict pronounced on all forms which will not advance. And does not
the same law of advance or extinction apply to man? What is the
record of successive civilizations but its verification?
Notice once more that as we ascend in the scale of development
natural selection selects more unsparingly and the path to life
narrows. It is a very easy matter for the lowest forms to get food.
Indeed the plant sits still and its food comes to it. And the battle
of brute force can be fought in a multitude of ways--by mere
strength, by activity, by offensive or defensive armor, or even by
running into the mud and skulking. It is harder to gain knowledge,
and yet many roads lead to an education. Colleges are by no means
the only seats of education. And many totally uneducated men have
college diplomas. And life is, after all, the great university, and
here the sluggard fails and the plucky man with the poor "fit" often
carries off the honors.
"But where shall wisdom be found?
And where is the place of understanding?
The gold and the crystal cannot equal it:
And the exchange of it shall not be for jewels of fine gold.
No mention shall be made of corals or of pearls:
For the price of wisdom is above rubies."
And when it comes to righteousness there is only one right, and
everything else is wrong. "Wide is the gate and broad is the way
that leadeth to destruction, and many there be that go in thereat:
Because strait is the gate and narrow is the way which leadeth unto
life, and few there be that find it." Therefore "strive to enter in
at the strait gate." And remember that "strive" means wrestle like
one of the athletes in the old Olympic games.
"I saw also that the Interpreter took Christian again by the hand
and led him into a pleasant place, where was built a stately
palace beautiful to behold; at the sight of which Christian was
greatly delighted. He saw also, upon the top thereof, certain
persons walking, who were clothed all in gold. Then said
Christian, May we go in thither?
"Then the Interpreter took him and led him up toward the door of
the palace; and, behold, at the door stood a great company of
men, as desirous to go in, but durst not. There also sat a man at
a little distance from the door at a table-side, to take the name
of him that should enter therein; he saw also that in the
door-way stood many men in armour, to keep it, being resolved to
do to the men that would enter what hurt and mischief they could.
Now was Christian somewhat in amaze. At last, when every man
started back for fear of the armed men, Christian saw a man of a
very stout countenance come up to the man that sat there to
write, saying, Set down my name, Sir; the which when he had done,
he saw the man draw his sword, and put an helmet upon his head,
and rush toward the door upon the armed men, who laid upon him
with deadly force; but the man, not at all discouraged, fell to
cutting and hacking most fiercely. So after he had received and
given many wounds to those that attempted to keep him out, he cut
his way through them all, and pressed forward into the palace, at
which there was a pleasant voice heard from those that were
within, even of those that walked upon the top of the palace
saying:
"'Come in, come in;
Eternal glory thou shalt win.'
"So he went in, and was clothed in such garments as they.
"Then Christian smiled, and said, I think verily I know the
meaning of this."--Bunyan's, Pilgrim's Progress, p. 44.
If you wish to climb the Matterhorn many paths lead up the lower
slopes, and a stumble here may cost you only a sprain. And I suppose
that several paths lead to the base of the cone. But thence to the
summit there is but one path, and a misstep means death. Pardon
these quotations and illustrations. They are my only means of at all
adequately presenting to you a scientific man's conception of the
meaning of the struggle for life. The laws of evolution are written
in blood and bear the death penalty. For
"Life is not as idle ore,
But iron dug from central gloom,
And heated hot with burning fears,
And dipt in baths of hissing tears,
And battered with the shocks of doom
To shape and use."
There would seem therefore to be going on a process of natural
selection. Natural selection seems to select more unsparingly and
the struggle for life--or even existence--to grow fiercer as we
advance from lower forms to higher in the animal kingdom.
But the theory which we have agreed to accept teaches us that these
survivors are those which or who have conformed to their environment
and that they have survived because of their conformity. And what do
we mean by environment? And does not man modify his environment?
Certainly he changes by irrigation a desert into a garden. He
carries water against its tendency to the hill-top. But he has
learned to do this only by studying the laws which govern the
motions of fluids and rigorously obeying them. He must carry his
water in strong pipes and take it from some higher point, or must
use heat or some means to furnish the force to drive it to the
higher point. He cannot change a single iota of the law, and gains
control of the elements only by obedience to their laws. Electricity
is man's best servant as long as he respects its laws, but it kills
him who disobeys them. But does not man make his own surroundings in
social life? He merely enters upon a new mode of life; and if this
new mode be in conformity with the eternal forces and laws of
environment man prospers in this new mode of life and conforms still
more closely.
There is, indeed, but one environment, but the lower animal comes in
contact with, and is affected by, but a small portion of its
elements. Form and color were in the world before the animal had
developed an eye, but up to this time these could have but little
effect on animal life. Light vibrations were present in ether long
before the animal by responding to them made them any part of its
own true environment. There is vastly more in environment than man
has yet discovered, and he will discover these elements only by
obedience to their laws.
Environment includes ultimately all the forces and elements which go
to make up our world or universe. It is an exceedingly general term.
I might say that under the environment of certain wheels, springs,
and spindles, which we call a Jacquard loom, silk threads become a
ribbon worthy of a queen. Is Nature and environment only a huge
divine loom to weave man and something higher yet? One great
difference is evident. Under normal conditions the silk must become
a ribbon. But protoplasm can fail to conform and become waste.
Environment is a very hard word to define, and our views concerning
it may differ.
One thing, however, seems to me clear and evident. If each
successive stage in the ascending series is selected or survives on
account of its conformity to environment there must be some element
or power, something or somewhat in environment specially
corresponding in some way to, or suited to drawing out, the
characteristic of this ascending stage on account of which it
survives. The forces and elements of environment make and work
against those at each stage who wander from the right path, and for
those who follow it. And thus natural selection arises as the total
result of the combined working of all these forces. They all unite
in one resultant working along a certain line, and natural selection
is the effect of this resultant. In the stage represented by hydra
the forces of environment combine in a resultant which works for
digestion and reproduction and the best development of their organs.
But as the animal changes he comes into a new relation or occupies a
new position in respect to these forces. New elements in the old
environment are beginning to press upon him. And the resultant
changes accordingly. He may be compared to a steamer at sea which
raises a sail. The wind has been blowing for hours, but the sail
gives it a new hold on the ship. Steam and wind now combine in a new
resultant of forces. From worms upward environment manifests itself
through natural selection as a power working for muscular force and
brute strength or activity.
But soon natural selection ceases to select on the ground of brute
force. After a time environment proves to be a power making for
shrewdness. And when the mammal has appeared the resultant of the
forces of environment impels more and more toward unselfishness, and
when man has appeared environment proves to be a "power, not
ourselves, that makes for righteousness." But what shall we say of
an environment which unmasks itself at last as a power making for
intelligence, unselfishness, and righteousness? Someone may answer
it is a host of chemical and physical forces bringing about very
high ends. That is very true, but is it the whole truth? The
thinking man must ask, How did it come about, and why is it that all
these forces work together for such high moral and intelligent ends?
We face, therefore, the question, Can an environment which proves
finally and ultimately to be a power not ourselves making for
righteousness and unselfishness be purely material and mechanical?
Or must there be in or behind it something spiritual? Shall we best
call environment, in its highest manifestation, "it" or "him?"
The old argument of Socrates, as on the last day of his life he sits
discoursing with his friends, still holds good. He is discussing the
same old question, whether there is anything more than force,
material, mechanism in the world. He says that one might assign as
"the cause why I am sitting here that my body is composed of bones
and muscles; that the bones are solid and separate, and that the
muscles can be contracted and extended, and are all inclosed in the
flesh and skin; and that the bones, being jointed, can be drawn by
the muscles, and so I can move my legs as you see; and that this is
the reason why I am sitting here. But by the dog, these bones and
muscles would long ago have carried me to Megara or Booetia, moved
by my opinion of what was best, if I had not thought it more right
and honorable to submit to the sentence pronounced by the state than
to run away from it. To call such things causes is absurd. For there
is a great difference between the cause and that without which the
cause would not produce its effect."
If there is no intelligence or love of truth in the cause, how can
there be anything higher in the effect? And if Socrates had been
only bone and muscle, he ought to have run away.
Our problem stands somewhat as follows: We have given protoplasm, a
strange substance of marvellous capacities, which we call functions,
and possessing a power of developing into beings of ever higher
grades of organization. Environment proves to be a combination of
forces working for the higher development of functions in a certain
orderly sequence. And every lower function in the ascending line
demands the development of the next higher. Digestion demands
muscle, and muscle nerve, and nerve brain. We shall soon see that
mammalian structure had to culminate in the family, and the family
demands unselfishness and obedience. Environment therefore proves
from the beginning to have been unceasingly working for the highest
end; never, even temporarily, merely for the lower. For we have seen
that environment works most unsparingly against those who, having
taken certain of the steps in the ascending path, fail to continue
therein.
But in order to attain this highest end for which it has always been
working, an immense number of subsidiary ends have had to be
attained. These are not merely digestion and brain, but a host of
others: _e.g._, in vertebrates, vertebræ of the right substance,
position, form, arrangement, and union. And in the ascending line,
for whose highest forms it has continually worked, the difficulties
of attaining each subsidiary end have been successively solved, and
through this host of subsidiary ends the animal kingdom has advanced
straight to its goal of intelligence and righteousness. Now the
whole process is a grand argument for design. But I would not
emphasize the process so much as the end attained. This especially,
when attained by conformity to that environment, demands more than
mere mindless atoms in or behind that environment. Can we call the
ultimate power which makes for righteousness "it?" Can we call it
less than "Him, in whom we live and move and have our being?"
The history of life is a grand drama. "Paradise Lost" and
Shakespeare's plays are but fragments of it. But without
intelligence they could never have been composed; without a choice
of means and ends they could never have been placed upon the stage.
Does the plot of this grander drama of evolution demand no
intelligence in its ultimate cause and producer? Is the succession
of steps, each succeeding the other in such order as to lead to
truth and right and continual progress toward a spiritual goal, is
this plot possible without a great composer who has seen the end
from the beginning? Could it ever have been executed upon the stage
of the world, and perhaps of the universe, without an executing
will?
Now I freely grant you that this is no mathematical demonstration.
Natural science does not deal in demonstrations, it rests upon the
doctrine of probabilities; just as we have to order our whole lives
according to this doctrine. Its solution of a problem is never the
only conceivable answer, but the one which best fits and explains
all the facts and meets the fewest objections. The arguments for the
existence of a personal God are far stronger than those in favor of
any theory of evolution. But we very rightly test the former
arguments, indefinitely more rigidly and severely, just because our
very life hangs on them. On the other hand, we should not reject
them as useless, because they are not of an entirely different kind
from those on which all the actions and beliefs of our common daily
life are based. There is a scepticism which is merely a credulity of
negations. This also we should avoid.
We have considered a few of the reasons for thinking that, with the
material, there must be something spiritual in environment, that if
the woof is material the warp is God. Here we need not delay long.
Blank atheism seems to be at present unpopular and generally
regarded as unscientific. The so-called philosophic materialism of
the present day seems to be in general far nearer to pantheism than
to the old form of materialism which recognized only atoms and
mechanism. Atheism as a power to deform the lives of men has, for
the present, lost its hold, and even agnosticism is respectful. The
materialism against which we have to struggle is not that of the
school, but of the shop, of society, of life. There are
comparatively few now who avow a system of philosophy making
mindless atoms their first cause.
But there is a far grosser, more deadly materialism of the heart
and will. It sits unrebuked in the front pews of our churches and
controls alike church and parish, caucus and legislature. It calls
on us all to fall down and worship, promising the world if we obey,
the cross if we refuse. And we bow to it; and that is all it asks,
for a nod on our part makes us its slaves. It is the idolatry of
money, position, shrewdness, learning--in one word, of success. It
takes all the strength out of our morality, loyalty and obedience to
God out of our religion, and makes cowards and liars of us, who
should be heroes. It makes our religion a byword with honest
unbelievers. And if they are honest scientific minds, waiting for
evidence of the practical value of our religion, why should they
believe, when we live so successfully down to the religion which we
would scorn to openly profess? Our fathers may have been narrow or
straight-laced; they were not cross-eyed from trying to keep one eye
on God and the other on the main chance. What is the use of
whispering, "Lord, Lord," Sundays, if we shout, "Oh, Baal, hear us,"
all the rest of the week. Let us at least be honest, and "if Baal be
god, follow him," and avow it. And worst, and most hideous, of all,
we are not so much hypocrites as self-deceived. Let us not forget
the old Greek doctrine of Ate, goddess of judicial blindness, sent
down only upon those who were living the unpardonable sin of
indifference.
But supposing that there is in environment something more and other
than material, can we possibly know anything about it?
I am in a boat near the mouth of a river. The boat is tossed by the
waves, driven by currents of wind, and now and then temporarily
turned by eddies. I seem to look out upon a chaos of apparently
conflicting forces. But all the time the wind and tide are sweeping
me homeward. Now the wind, which sometimes indeed does shift, and
the great tidal wave are steadily bearing me in a certain direction,
though wave and eddy and gust may often make this appear doubtful to
me. So, underneath all waves and eddies of environment, there is a
great tidal wave, bearing man steadily onward; and I gain a certain
amount of valid knowledge of environment from the direction in which
it is bearing me.
Let us change the illustration. Man survives as all his ancestors
have survived before him, through conformity to environment.
Environment has therefore during ages past been continually making
impressions upon him. And he can draw valid inferences concerning
the one power, which must underlie the apparent host of forces of
environment, from the impressions which these have left upon the
structure of his mind and character. By studying himself he gains
valid knowledge of what is deepest in environment. For man is the
most completely and closely conformed thereto of all living beings.
But man _is_ a religious being. This is a fact which demands
explanation just as much as bone and muscle. Now no evolutionist
would believe that the eye could ever have developed without the
stimulus of light acting upon the cells of the skin. Place the
animal in darkness and the eye becomes rudimentary and disappears.
Could a visual organ for seeing moral and religious truth have ever
originated in the mind of man had there been no corresponding
pulsation and thrill of a corresponding reality in environment? Is
not the one development just as improbable or inconceivable as the
other?
And this is the reason that, when man awakened to himself and his
own powers, he knew that there was and must be a God. "Pass over the
earth," says Plutarch; "you may discover cities without walls,
without literature, without monarchs, without palaces and wealth;
where the theatre and the school are not known; but no man ever saw
a city without temples and gods, where prayers and oaths and oracles
and sacrifices were not used for obtaining pardon or averting evil."
Given man and environment as they are, and a belief in God is a
necessary result. But you may ask, if we are to worship a personal
God, why might not a conscious and religious hydra, with equal
right, worship an infinite stomach, and the annelid a god of mere
brute force?
There stands in Florence a magnificent statue by Michel Angelo. A
human figure is only partially hewn out of the stone. He never
finished it. If you could have seen the master hewing the chips with
hasty, impatient blows from the shapeless block, you would have been
tempted to say that he was but a stonecutter, and but a hasty
workman at that. Even now we do not know exactly what form and
expression he would have given to the still unfinished head. But no
one can examine it and hesitate to pronounce it a grand work of a
master-mind. In any manifestly incomplete work you must judge the
purpose and character and powers of the workman or artist by its
highest possibilities, just so far as you have any reason to believe
that these possibilities will be realized. You must look at the
rudely outlined heroic human figure in the block of stone, not at
the rough unfinished pedestal, if you would know Michel Angelo. So
in the hydra and the annelid you must look at the possibilities of
the nervous system before you or he think that digestion and muscle
are all.
Once more the highest powers dawn far down in the animal kingdom.
There are traces of mind in the amoeba, and of unselfishness in
the lower mammals. If there were a goal of human development higher
and other than unselfishness, wisdom, and love, we should have seen
traces of it before this. But have we found the faintest sign of any
such? Moreover, remember that a function continues to develop about
as long as it shows the capacity for development. And during that
period environment is a power making for its higher development. But
is there any limit to the possible development of the three mental
activities mentioned above? I can see none. Then must we not expect
that environment will always make for these? And will environment
ever manifest itself to man as the seat or instrument of a power
possessing higher faculties other than these? Man must worship a
personal God of wisdom, unselfishness, and love, or cease to
worship. The latter alternative he never yet has been able to take,
and society survive under its domination. So I at least am compelled
to read the finding of biological history.
But let us grant for the sake of argument that man contains still
undeveloped germs of faculties capable of perceiving and attaining
something as much higher than wisdom and love as these are higher
than brute force. You will answer, this is not only inconceivable,
it is impossible. Still let us grant the possibility. We notice,
first of all, that it is against the whole course of evolution that
these faculties should be other than mental, and what we class under
powers pertaining to our personality. For ages past evidently, and
no less really from the very beginning, evolution has worked for the
body only as a perfect vehicle of mind, and for this as leading to
will and character. And human development has led, and ever more
tends, as Mr. Drummond has shown, to the arrest, though not the
degeneration, of the body. It is to remain at the highest possible
stage of efficiency as the servant of mind. These higher powers will
thus be mental and personal powers. And how has any and every
advance to higher capabilities been attained in the animal kingdom?
Merely by the most active possible exercise of the next lower power.
This is proven by the sequence of physical and mental functions. We
shall attain, therefore, any higher mental capacities only by the
continual practice of wisdom and love. That is our only path to
something higher, if higher there shall ever be. But if we find that
the God of our environment is a God of something higher than love
and righteousness, will these cease to be characteristics of his
nature and essence? Not at all.
I have learned, perhaps, to know my father as a plain citizen. If I
later find that he is a king and statesman, with powers and mental
capacities of which I have never dreamed, do I therefore from that
time cease to think of him as wise and kind and good? Not in the
least. I only trust his love and wisdom as guide of my little life
all the more. And shall not the same be true of God though he be
king of all worlds and ages? It becomes unwise and wrong to worship
God as the God of might only when we have found that he is a God
also of something higher and nobler, of love; and after we have
perceived this fully and worship him as love, we rest in the arms of
his infinite power.
But now that the work has gone thus far, we can see that all
development must take place along personal, spiritual lines; and are
compelled to believe in a spiritual cause who knew the end from the
beginning. And man's farther progress depends upon his conformity to
this spiritual environment. And what is conformity to the personal
element in our environment but likeness to him? This is my only
possible mode of conformity to a person--to become like him in word,
action, thought, and purpose, and finally in all my being. Very far
from a close resemblance we still are. But we are more like him than
primitive man was; and our descendants will resemble him far more
closely than we. And thus man, conscious of his environment, and
that means capable of knowing something about God, knows at least
what God requires of him, namely, righteousness, love, and likeness
to himself; or, as the old heathen seer expressed it, "to do justly,
love mercy, and walk humbly before God." Man is and must be a
religious being. And he conforms consciously. Thus to be more like
God he must know more about him, and to know more about him he must
become more like him. The two go hand in hand, and by mutual
reaction strengthen each other. I will not enter into the most
important question of all, whether we can ever really know a person
unless we have some love for him. The facts of evolution seem to me
to admit of but one interpretation, that of Augustine: "Thou hast
formed me for thee, O Lord, and my restless spirit finds no rest but
in thee." Granted, therefore, a personal God in and behind
environment, however dimly perceived, and conformity to environment
means god-likeness; for conformity to a person can mean nothing less
than likeness to him.
Some of you must, all of you should, have read Professor Huxley's
"Address on Education." In it he says, "It is a very plain and
elementary truth that the life, the fortune, and the happiness of
every one of us, and, more or less, of those who are connected with
us, do depend upon our knowing something of the rules of a game
infinitely more difficult and complicated than chess. It is a game
which has been played for unknown ages, every man and woman of us
being one of the two players in a game of his or her own. The
chess-board is the world, the pieces are the phenomena of the
universe, the rules of the game are what we call the laws of Nature.
The player on the other side is hidden from us. We know that his
play is always fair, just, and patient. But also we know, to our
cost, that he never overlooks a mistake, or makes the smallest
allowance for ignorance. To the man who plays well the highest
stakes are paid with that sort of overflowing generosity with which
the strong shows delight in strength. And one who plays ill is
checkmated--without haste, but without remorse.
"My metaphor," he continues, "will remind some of you of the famous
picture in which Retzsch has depicted Satan playing at chess with
man for his soul. Substitute for the mocking fiend in that picture
a calm, strong angel, who is playing for love, as we say, and would
rather lose than win--and I should accept it as an image of human
life."[1]
[Footnote 1: Huxley: Lay Sermons and Addresses, p. 31.]
This is a marvellous illustration, and in general as true as it is
beautiful and grand. But that "calm, strong angel who is playing for
love, as we say, and would rather lose than win," is certainly a
very strange antagonist. Is it, after all, possible that our
clear-eyed scientific man has altogether misunderstood the game? Is
not the "calm, strong angel" more probably our partner? Certainly
very many things point that way. And who are our antagonists? Look
within yourself and you will always find at least a pair ready to
take a hand against you, to say nothing of the possibilities of
environment. "Rex regis rebellis." Our partner is trying by every
method, except perhaps by "talking across the board," to teach us
the laws and methods of this great game. And calls and signals are
always allowable. The game is not finished in one hand; he gives us
a second and third, and repeats the signals, and never misleads.
Only when we carelessly or obstinately refuse to learn, and wilfully
lose the game beyond all hope, does he leave us to meet our losses
as best we may.
Let us carry the illustration a step farther. Who knows that the
game was, or could be, at first taught without talking across the
board? I can find nothing in science to compel such a belief, many
things render it improbable. Grant a personality in environment to
which personality in man is to conform and gain likeness.
Environment can act on the digestive and muscular systems through
mere material. But how can personality in environment act on
personality in man except by personal contact or by symbols easy of
comprehension according to its own laws? Some method of attaining
acquaintance at least we should certainly expect.
But some of you may ask, How can any theory of evolution guarantee
that anything of the present shall survive in the future? It is
continually changing and destroying former types. The old order of
everything changes and passes away, giving place to the new. But is
this the whole truth? Evolution is a radical process, but we must
never forget that it is also, and at the same time, exceedingly
conservative. The cell was the first invention of the animal
kingdom, and all higher animals are and must be cellular in
structure. Our tissues were formed ages on ages ago; they have all
persisted. Most of our organs are as old as worms. All these are
very old, older than the mountains, and yet I cannot doubt that they
must last as long as man exists. Indeed, while Nature is wonderfully
inventive of new structures, her conservatism in holding on to old
ones is still more remarkable. In the ascending line of development
she tries an experiment once exceedingly thorough, and then the
question is solved for all time. For she always takes time enough to
try the experiment exhaustively. It took ages to find how to build a
spinal column or brain, but when the experiment was finished she had
reason to be, and was, satisfied. And if this is true of bodily
organs we should expect that the same law would hold good when the
animal development gradually passes over into the spiritual. And
what is human history but the record of moral and religious
experiments, and their success or failure according as the
experimenters conformed to the laws of the spiritual forces with
which they had to do?
We need not fear that our old fundamental beliefs will be lost.
Their very age shows that they have been thoroughly tested in the
great experiment of human history and found sure. Modified they may
be; they will be used for higher purposes and the building of better
characters than ours. They will not be lost or discarded. We too
often think of nature as building like man, with huge scaffoldings,
which must later be torn down and destroyed. But in the forest the
only scaffolding is the heart of oak.
We have seen that the sequence of functions in animal development
has culminated in man's rational, moral nature. He alone has the
clear perception of the reality of right, truth, and duty. The
pursuit of these has made him what he is. His advance, if there is
any continuity in history, depends upon his making these the ruling
motives and aims of his life. He must continually grow in
righteousness and unselfishness, if he is not to degenerate and give
place to some other product of evolution. Moreover, as these moral
faculties are capable of indefinite, if not infinite, development,
they must dominate his life through a future of indefinite duration.
For the length of the period of dominance of a function has always
been proportional to the capacity of that function for future
development. These can never, so far as we can see, be superseded,
for no rival to them can be discovered. We have found in them the
culmination of the sequence of functions.
We have attempted to show in this lecture that reversal of this
grand sequence has always led to degeneration, or, in higher forms,
far more frequently, to extinction. As we ascend, natural selection
works more, rather than less, unsparingly. And as advance depends
upon conformity to environment, and as the highest forms must be
regarded as therefore most completely conformed, we gain our most
adequate knowledge of environment when we study it as working
especially for these. For these have been from the very beginning
its far-off, chief aim and goal. Viewed from this standpoint,
environment proves to be a host of interacting forces uniting in a
resultant "power, not ourselves, that makes for righteousness," and
unselfishness.
Inasmuch as man's rational moral nature, his personality, is the
result of the last and longest step toward and in conformity to
environment, these powers correspond to that which is at the same
time highest, and deepest, and most fundamental in that environment.
This power which makes for righteousness is therefore to be regarded
as personal and spiritual rather than material. It is God immanent
in nature. And it is mainly to this personal and spiritual element
in his environment that man is in the future to more completely
conform. Conformity to this element in man's environment does not so
much result in life as it _is_ life; failure to conform is death.
And the pressure of environment upon man, compelling him to choose
between life through conformity and non-conformity with death, can
be most naturally and adequately explained as the expression of his
will. We know what he requires of us.
Our knowledge of him is very incomplete, but may be valid as far as
it extends. And it would seem to be valid, for it has been tested by
ages of experiment. The results of this grand experiment have been
summed up in man's fundamental religious beliefs. And farther
knowledge will be gained by more complete obedience to the
requirements already known. The evidence, that these fundamental
religious beliefs will persist, is of the same character as that
upon which rests our belief in the persistence of cells and tissues.
The one is rooted in the structure of our minds; the other, in the
structure of our bodies. But, after all, only will can act upon
will, and personality upon personality. It remains for us to examine
how man was compelled by his very structure to develop a new element
in his environment, conformed indeed to the laws of his old
environment, but better fitted to draw out the moral and spiritual
side of his nature. And in connection with this study we may hope to
gain some new light on the laws of conformity.