I have never understood why it is that those who talk most about
evolution, and talk it in the very age of fashionable evolutionism, do
not see the one way in which evolution really does apply to our modern
difficulty. There is, of course, an element of evolutionism in the
universe; and I know no religion or philosophy that ever entirely
ignored it. Evolution, popularly speaking, is that which happens to
unconscious things. They grow unconsciously; or fade unconsciously; or
rather, some parts of them grow and some parts of them fade; and at any
given moment there is almost always some presence of the fading thing,
and some incompleteness in the growing one. Thus, if I went to sleep
for a hundred years, like the Sleeping Beauty (I wish I could), I should
grow a beard--unlike the Sleeping Beauty. And just as I should grow
hair if I were asleep, I should grow grass if I were dead. Those whose
religion it was that God was asleep were perpetually impressed
and affected by the fact that he had a long beard. And those whose
philosophy it is that the universe is dead from the beginning (being
the grave of nobody in particular) think that is the way that grass can
grow. In any case, these developments only occur with dead or dreaming
things. What happens when everyone is asleep is called Evolution. What
happens when everyone is awake is called Revolution.
There was once an honest man, whose name I never knew, but whose face
I can almost see (it is framed in Victorian whiskers and fixed in a
Victorian neck-cloth), who was balancing the achievements of France and
England in civilisation and social efficiencies. And when he came to the
religious aspect he said that there were more stone and brick churches
used in France; but, on the other hand, there are more sects in England.
Whether such a lively disintegration is a proof of vitality in any
valuable sense I have always doubted. The sun may breed maggots in a
dead dog; but it is essential for such a liberation of life that the dog
should be unconscious or (to say the least of it) absent-minded. Broadly
speaking, you may call the thing corruption, if you happen to like dogs.
You may call it evolution, if you happen to like maggots. In either
case, it is what happens to things if you leave them alone.