I
It is never safe to question Darwin's facts, but it is always safe to
question any man's theories. It is with Darwin's theories that I am
mainly concerned here. He has already been shorn of his selection
doctrines as completely as Samson was shorn of his locks, but there
are other phases of his life and teachings that invite discussion.
The study of Darwin's works begets such an affection for the man, for
the elements of character displayed on every page, that one is slow in
convincing one's self that anything is wrong with his theories. There
is danger that one's critical judgment will be blinded by one's
partiality for the man.
For the band of brilliant men who surrounded him and championed his
doctrines--Spencer, Huxley, Lyall, Hooker, and others--one feels
nothing more personal than admiration; unless the eloquent and
chivalrous Huxley--the knight in shining armor of the Darwinian
theory--inspires a warmer feeling. Darwin himself almost disarms one
by his amazing candor and his utter self-abnegation. The question
always paramount in his mind is, what is the truth about this matter?
What fact have you got for me, he seems to say, that will upset my
conclusion? If you have one, that is just what I am looking for.
Could we have been permitted to gaze upon the earth in the middle
geologic period, in Jurassic or Triassic times, we should have seen it
teeming with huge, uncouth, gigantic forms of animal life, in the sea,
on the land, and in the air, and with many lesser forms, but with no
sign of man anywhere; ransack the earth from pole to pole and there
was no sign or suggestion, so far as we could have seen, of a human
being.
Come down the stream of time several millions of years--to our own
geologic age--and we find the earth swarming with the human species
like an ant-hill with ants, and with a vast number of forms not found
in the Mesozoic era; and the men are doing to a large part of the
earth what the ants do to a square rod of its surface. Where did they
come from? We cannot, in our day, believe that a hand reached down
from heaven, or up from below, and placed them there. There is no
alternative but to believe that in some way they arose out of the
antecedent animal life of the globe; in other words that man is the
result of the process of evolution, and that all other existing forms
of life, vegetable and animal, are a product of the same movement.
To explain how this came about, what factors and forces entered into
the transformation, is the task that Darwin set himself. It was a
mighty task, and whether or not his solution of the problem stands the
test of time, we must yet bow in reverence before one of the greatest
of natural philosophers; for even to have conceived this problem thus
clearly, and to have placed it in intelligible form before men's
minds, is a great achievement.
Darwin was as far from being as sure of the truth of Darwinism as many
of his disciples were, and still are. He said in 1860, in a letter to
one of his American correspondents, "I have never for a moment doubted
that, though I cannot see my errors, much of my book ["The Origin of
Species"] will be proved erroneous." Again he said, in 1862, "I look
at it as absolutely certain that very much in the 'Origin' will be
proved rubbish; but I expect and hope that the framework will stand."
Its framework is the theory of Evolution, which is very sure to stand.
In its inception his theory is half-miracle and half-fact. He assumes
that in the beginning (as if there ever was or could be a "beginning,"
in that sense) God created a few forms, animal and vegetable, and then
left it to the gods of Evolution, the chief of which is Natural
Selection, to do the rest. While Darwin would not admit any
predetermining factors in Evolution, or that any innate tendency to
progressive development existed, he said he could not look upon the
world of living things as the result of chance. Yet in fortuitous, or
chance, variation he saw one of the chief factors of Evolution.
The world of Chance into which Darwinism delivers us--what can the
thoughtful mind make of it?
That life with all its myriad forms is the result of chance is,
according to Professor Osborn, a biological dogma. He everywhere uses
the word "chance" as opposed to law, or to the sequence of cause and
effect. This, it seems to me, is a misuse of the term. Is law, in this
sense, ever suspended or annulled? If one chances to fall off his
horse or his house, is it not gravity that pulls him down? Are not the
laws of energy everywhere operative in all movements of matter in the
material world? Chance is not opposed to law, but to design. Anything
that befalls us that was not designed is a matter of chance. The
fortuitous enters largely into all human life. If I carelessly toss a
stone across the road, it is a matter of chance just where it will
fall, but its course is not lawless. Does not gravity act upon it?
does not the resistance of the air act upon it? does not the muscular
force of my arm act upon it? and does not this complex of physical
forces determine the precise spot where the stone shall fall? If, in
its fall, it were to hit a bird or a mouse or a flower, that would be
a matter of chance, so far as my will was concerned. Is not a meteoric
stone falling out of space acted upon by similar forces, which
determine where it shall strike the earth? In this case, we must
substitute for the energy of my arm the cosmic energy that gives the
primal impetus to all heavenly bodies. If the falling aërolite were to
hit a person or a house, we should say it was a matter of chance,
because it was not planned or designed. But when the shells of the
long-range guns hit their invisible target or the bombs from the
airplanes hit their marks, chance plays a part, because all the
factors that enter into the problem are not and cannot be on the
instant accurately measured. The collision of two heavenly bodies in
the depth of space, which does happen, is, from our point of view, a
matter of chance, although governed by inexorable law.
The forms of inanimate objects--rocks, hills, rivers, lakes--are
matters of chance, since they serve no purpose: any other form would
be as fit; but the forms of living things are always purposeful. Is it
possible to believe that the human body, with all its complicated
mechanism, its many wonderful organs of secretion and excretion and
assimilation, is any more matter of chance than a watch or a
phonograph is? Though what agent to substitute for the word "chance,"
I confess I do not know. The short cut to an omnipotent Creator
sitting apart from the thing created will not satisfy the naturalist.
And to make energy itself creative, as Professor Osborn does, is only
to substitute one god for another. I can no more think of the course
of organic evolution as being accidental in the Darwinian sense, than
I can think of the evolution of the printing-press or the aëroplane as
being accidental, although chance has played its part. Can we think of
the first little horse of which we have any record, the eohippus of
three or four millions of years ago, as evolving by accidental
variations into the horse of our time, without presupposing an equine
impulse to development? As well might we trust our ships to the winds
and waves with the expectation that they will reach their several
ports.
Are we to believe that we live in an entirely mechanical and
fortuitous world--a world which has no interior, which is only a maze
of acting, reacting, and interacting of blind physical forces?
According to the chance theory, the struggle of a living body to exist
does not differ from the vicissitudes of, say, water seeking an
equilibrium, or heat a uniform temperature.
Chance has played an important part in human history, and in all
life-history--often, no doubt, the main part--since history began. It
was by chance that Columbus discovered America; he simply blundered
upon it. He had set out on his voyage with something quite different
in view. But his ship, and the crew, and the voyage itself, were not
matters of chance but of purpose.
According to the selectionists' theory, chance gave the bird its
wings, the fish its fins, the porcupine its quills, the skunk its
fetid secretion, the cuttlefish its ink, the swordfish its sword, the
electric eel its powerful battery; it gave the giraffe its long neck,
the camel its hump, the horse its hoof, the ruminants their horns and
double stomach, and so on. According to Weismann, it gave us our eyes,
our ears, our hands with the fingers and opposing thumb, it gave us
all the complicated and wonderful organs of our bodies, and all their
circulation, respiration, digestion, assimilation, secretion,
excretion, reproduction. All we are, or can be, the selectionist
credits to Natural Selection.
Try to think of that wonderful organ, the eye, with all its marvelous
powers and adaptations, as the result of what we call chance or
Natural Selection. Well may Darwin have said that the eye made him
shudder when he tried to account for it by Natural Selection. Why, its
adaptations in one respect alone, minor though they be, are enough to
stagger any number of selectionists. I refer to the rows of peculiar
glands that secrete an oily substance, differing in chemical
composition from any other secretion, a secretion which keeps the
eyelids from sticking together in sleep. "Behavior as lawless as
snowflakes," says Whitman--a phrase which probably stuck to him from
Rousseau; but are snowflakes and raindrops lawless? To us creatures of
purpose, they are so because the order of their falling is haphazard.
They obey their own laws. Again we see chance working inside of law.
When the sower scatters the seed-grains from his hand, he does not and
cannot determine the point of soil upon which any of them shall fall,
but there is design in his being there and in sowing the seed.
Astronomy is an exact science, biology is not. The celestial events
always happen on time. The astronomers can tell us to the fraction of
a second when the eclipses of the sun and moon and the transit of the
inferior planets across the sun's disk will take place. They know and
have measured all the forces that bring them about. Now, if we knew
with the same mathematical precision all the elements that enter into
the complex of forces which shapes our lives, could we forecast the
future with the same accuracy with which the astronomers forecast the
movements of the orbs? or are there incommensurable factors in life?