PARALLEL PATHS
_All Rights Reserved_
PARALLEL PATHS
A STUDY IN
BIOLOGY, ETHICS, AND ART
BY
T. W. ROLLESTON
“Il faudrait, en un mot, suivre la grande route si profondément
creusée ... mais il serait nécessaire aussi de tracer en l’air un
chemin parallele, une autre route, d’atteindre les en deça et les
après, de faire, en un mot, un naturalisme spiritualiste; ce serait
autrement fier, autrement complet, autrement fort.”
J. K. Huysmans.
LONDON
DUCKWORTH & CO.
3, HENRIETTA STREET, COVENT GARDEN
1908
PREFACE
In a recent work by an eminent man of science, Dr. J. Reinke, Professor
of Botany at the University of Kiel, there occurs a passage which
I cannot do better than place in the forefront of this book as an
indication of its aim.
“Physiology,” writes Professor Reinke, “has become the study of
the movements which, taken together, make up life. There is no
manner of doubt that nourishment, metabolism,[1] reproduction,
development, and sensation rest on processes of movement which
depend on material systems of peculiar molecular conformation. For
the bodies of plants and of animals are material systems whose
conformation is of a most intricate character.
“So far as physiology has at present advanced in the analysis
of these phenomena of movement, their problems have fallen
naturally into two groups. The first of these groups of phenomena
is comparatively transparent, and stands in agreement with the
general processes of the material world; it can be investigated by
observation and experiment. We may, therefore, hope to decipher
it completely, and to reduce it, in the end, to chemico-physical
processes. Of this kind are the phenomena of nutrition, taking
that word in its widest sense. But behind these processes there
stand the facts of development and of reproduction, and here, in
all investigations, and in spite of every attempt to demonstrate a
basis of physical energy, research finds itself confronted by an
_X_, a factor which mocks every effort to explain it by physics
or chemistry. And this _X_ which lurks in all the phenomena of
development takes a part in the nutritive processes also; so
essential a factor does it appear in all the processes of life that
chemical and physical forces alone would not suffice to keep alive
even the most rudimentary of organisms, not to mention creating
such an organism out of non-living chemical constituents.”[2]
If this _X_ force exists and can be established, it will give us the
clue, I believe, to much more than the operations of physical nature.
The following pages are an attempt to establish it, to define its
character, and to indicate the lines on which this unknown factor
in evolution seems to bring into a rational unity the phenomena of
the physical world and the moral and æsthetic faculties of man. The
time appears to have come for such an attempt. The fermentation of
mind produced by Darwin’s massive and victorious promulgation of the
evolution theory is beginning to subside; it is now possible in some
measure to take stock of what has been destroyed, of what has been left
intact, by the immense tidal wave of new thought which then swept over
the world. Some conceptions which were thought to have been submerged
for ever are reappearing in more or less altered shapes, and science
is called on to reconstruct a universe less one-sided, less aridly
simple, than that which Darwinism, as at first understood, appeared
to have left us. The result, so far as it is successful, will be the
establishment of a spiritual view of the universe on a natural basis.
It is an attempt which is at present occupying many minds, and which
will doubtless have to occupy many more before complete success is
attained.
I propose, in the following pages, to take the reader over the most
material and significant part of the ground by which I have myself
travelled towards certain conclusions. Much of this ground lies in
the region of biological science. No doubt to readers acquainted with
that science I shall often seem to delay too long in well-trodden
and familiar paths. But I have had to consider the fact that English
education is still very much specialized. It is either literary or
it is scientific. In the great majority of cases it is literary.
And though scientific problems and theories are understood by every
educated man and woman to be of deep importance and interest, and
though questions like those discussed in the present work are questions
on which all such persons are well entitled, and many feel themselves
bound, to have an opinion, very few, comparatively, have even the
elementary knowledge of science and its terminology necessary to
enable them to take up the discussion at an advanced point. When it
is announced from time to time that some chemist has again succeeded
in forming an organic compound out of inorganic chemical constituents
in his laboratory,[3] how many readers are there out of the small
circle of trained chemists who would not be far more impressed if they
heard that he had made a diamond? It is for these persons—the layman
and the lay-woman in point of science—that I mainly write, and my own
training having been philosophical and literary rather than scientific
I think I understand most of their difficulties. I have, therefore,
tried to ‘begin at the beginning’; and I hope that this book, besides
whatever value its conclusions may have, will prove useful to some
readers by putting them in a position to appreciate the extraordinarily
interesting and fruitful discoveries of biology in recent years.
“The lotus of physics,” as Schopenhauer says, “is rooted in the soil
of metaphysics,” and if these studies pretended to offer a complete
explanation of the riddle of existence, the metaphysical basis for
the speculations contained in them would have to be elaborated at
considerable length. But, after all, the conclusions reached would
only be those which most people are willing to accept as a necessary
assumption, if all thought on the constitution of the universe is
not to be a pure futility. Suffice it to say Man is here regarded
as an organic part of Nature, and his consciousness as Nature’s way
of mirroring herself to herself. Since, like other natural things,
the soul is not a complete and unalterable entity, but is part of
the eternal Becoming, it never can be claimed that its reflection of
the world is absolutely pure and complete, yet some reality, some
significance this reflection must surely have. The fact that man is
not something different from the world, observing it from outside,
but is vitally related to it, would alone entitle us to believe that,
however much his observations may need to be purified and corrected,
and however false may be the argumentative deductions sometimes drawn
from them, he is still capable of a real and fruitful apprehension of
the phenomena by which he is surrounded, and of their relations to
each other and to himself. All sincere thought must therefore tend to
brighten a little the mirror of the human soul. If this book should
do so in any degree, were it merely by provoking other minds to more
successful labours, the writer will thankfully say, like Apollo’s
temple-sweeper in the play of Euripides, Fair is the service of Light.
T. W. ROLLESTON.
Glenealy, Co. Wicklow.
_I have to thank The Macmillan Co. for permission to reproduce two
illustrations (Figs. 1 and 2) from Wilson’s_ The Cell in Development
and Inheritance, _and Mr. Edward Arnold for a similar favour in regard
to Fig. 3 from Weismann’s_ The Evolution Theory.
CONTENTS
PART I. BIOLOGY
CHAPTER I
The Argument from Design
PAGE
Paley and the Watch 1
The Analogy Inapplicable 4
Paley’s Conception of Design 8
The Evolutionary Conception 11
Conquest of Nature by the Evolution Theory 16
The Philosophic Basis of Nature-study 17
CHAPTER II
The Wheel of Life
Continuity of Animal, Vegetable, and Mineral Life 21
Characters of Organic Life 23
Living Matter: Its Functions 24
Its Substance 27
Its Structure 28
CHAPTER III
De Minimis
Growth and Development 32
Development a Cell-problem 33
The Mechanical Conception of Life 34
The Cell and its Structure 38
Cell-division and Heredity 40
Reproductive Cells and Body-cells 45
The Origin of Conjugation 46
The Mechanism of Conjugation 51
Significance of Elementary Vital Processes 59
Adaptability, a Fundamental Character of Life 63
CHAPTER IV
The Mechanical Theory of Evolution: the
Darwin-Lamarck Explanation
The Fixity of Species, how Maintained 66
The Mutability of Species 67
Lamarck’s Explanation of the Origin of Species 68
Natural Selection of Innate Variations 72
Difficulties of Lamarckism 77
Need of a deeper Explanation 89
CHAPTER V
The Mechanical Theory of Evolution: the
Darwin-Weismann Explanation
Lamarck, or ‘Metaphysics’? 91
Weismann’s Escape 93
The Struggle among the Determinants 95
Chance-Variations and Co-adaptation 97
Other Difficulties of the Chance-Variation Theory 99
Natural Selection 103
Impossible before Competition Existed 104
Co-operation and Competition 104
Protective Mimicry, Inexplicable by Chance-Variations and
Natural Selection 106
Innate Capacities of Life 109
Outline of Preceding Arguments 111
CHAPTER VI
The Directive Theory of Evolution
Nature’s Power of Response 115
Reinke’s Theory of Dominants 120
Cases of their Action in Evolution 123
Law and Directivity 128
Intelligence and Directivity 130
The Analogy of Social Evolution 131
The Analogy of Language 133
Synthetic Movement of the Cosmic Reason 137
Objections from Imperfect Adaptations and Regressive Forms
Stated 143
Mechanical and Psychic Agencies, how Distinguished 146
Science versus ‘Mysticism’ 150
Reply to Objection from Imperfect Adaptations, etc. 152
Man, the Growing-point of Earthly Life 154
Immanence or Transcendence of the Cosmic Reason? 155
Man’s Relations to the Whole 157
PART II. ETHICS
CHAPTER VII
Law, Free Will, Personality
Free Will and Determinism 161
The Determinist Position 163
The Free Will Position 164
Conditions necessary for Free Will 168
Has the Will an Ethical Bias? 169
Limitations of Free Will 172
Evolution of the Will 174
Free Will and Monism 176
Free Will and Brain-structure 177
Relations of Mind and Matter 186
Immortality 189
CHAPTER VIII
The Ethical Criterion
The Visible and the Invisible Worlds 194
Dualism and Monism 195
Monism and the Moral Law 198
The Hedonistic Basis of Morals 200
The Natural Basis of Morals 203
CHAPTER IX
The Ethical Sanction
The Individual and the Whole 208
A Scale of Motives 210
Conscience and its Commands, how respectively Derived 211
Results of Duty and of Self-indulgence Compared 212
The False and the True Asceticism 214
Ethics for Life: Implications of this Doctrine 220
Is Life Dependent on Matter? 222
The Cosmic Life gives Immortality to the Individual 225
And Demands his Allegiance 226
Ethics Originates in the Visible Order, but does not
end there 228
Hence, Ethics is for Death as well as Life 229
The Martyrdoms of Socrates and of Christ 230
Outline of the Conclusions arrived at 233
PART III. ART
CHAPTER X
Art and Life
Tolstoy’s Account of the Nature of Art 236
Of the Standard of Art 241
Of the Purpose of Art 241
Criticism of his Conclusions 245
Art, Man’s expression of Life 246
Art and Beauty 251
Order and Change as Principles of Life and Art 253
Classification of the Arts 254
Examples of the Presentative Arts—(_a_) Architecture 256
(_b_) Ornament 259
(_c_) Music 261
The Representative Arts—(_a_) The Plastic Arts 265
(_b_) Dancing 270
The Evocative Art: Literature 271
The Union of Music and Poetry 272
Conclusion 273
APPENDIX A
_Sum ergo Cogito_ 275
APPENDIX B
Co-operation and Competition 279
APPENDIX C
Is Life worth Living? 282
APPENDIX D
St. Francis the Poet 285
APPENDIX E
Isabella and Claudio 288
Index 295
PARALLEL PATHS
PART I: BIOLOGY
CHAPTER I
THE ARGUMENT FROM DESIGN
“The wisdom of the divine rule is apparent not in the perfection
but in the improvement of the world.”—Lord Acton.
Paley’s Natural Theology though not by any means an epoch-making
may perhaps be called an epoch-marking book. It was the crown of
the endeavour of eighteenth-century religious philosophy to found a
theology on the evidences of external nature. According to such exact
knowledge of Nature’s operations as was then generally available,
Paley’s attempt might well be thought to have succeeded. He opens his
argument with a striking and effective illustration. He imagines a
wayfarer crossing a heath who strikes his foot against a stone, and who
asks himself how it came into being. Paley thinks he might be content
with vaguely supposing that it was there ‘always.’ But suppose that
what he had found at his foot was not a stone but a watch and that he
now saw such an instrument for the first time. He would then certainly
have not been so easily contented with an answer to the riddle of
its existence. He would, if he examined it minutely, have observed
that it was a structure intended for a certain purpose, and having
all its parts arranged for that object, and mutually interdependent
The different substances of which it was composed would be discovered
to have each its special appropriateness for the fulfilling of some
particular function in the economy of the whole. Though unacquainted
with watches he would, if he was a man of sense and cultivation,
infallibly conclude that he had before him an instrument intelligently
constructed with a certain object in view—the object of measuring the
flight of time. He would feel assured of this, even though he should
find that the object of the mechanism were not attained with absolute
accuracy, and even though there were some parts of it whose functions
were not clear to him. The watch would be rightly regarded as a work of
design; and the observer would be justified in arguing from it to the
existence of a designer, endowed with the faculties of intelligence and
conscious purpose, by whom the watch must have been put together.
The rest of Paley’s Natural Theology is an application of this analogy
to the question of the origin of the universe. Ranging over the whole
field of animate and inanimate nature he points to instance after
instance of what appears to be the minute and thoughtful adaptation
of means to ends, the co-ordination of part with part in the interest
of the whole, and he has no difficulty, from this point of view,
in showing the world of nature to be a piece of mechanism far more
wonderfully and ingeniously constructed than any watch, and bearing
_prima facie_ evidence of the most convincing kind of its construction
by a Being possessed of intelligence, purpose and foresight precisely
resembling those attributes as displayed by man, but vastly heightened
and enlarged. As the watch must have been made by man, so a manlike
being, endowed with the necessary powers and faculties, must be
postulated as the maker of the material universe. And thus the
existence of a God made in the image of man appeared to have been
demonstrated to the satisfaction of eighteenth-century theology.
But minds of real philosophic depth have always shrunk from pressing
home deductions of this sort. They have felt that the matter is
probably not quite so simple as it might appear on the surface, and
they have recognised that if one is allowed to argue from the phenomena
of nature to the qualities of the author of nature one cannot draw an
arbitrary line including only those facts which testify to wisdom,
power and goodness, and excluding from view all those which reveal
imperfection of design and execution, or which would convict a man, if
he were their author, of inhumanity and injustice. If the universe is
really analogous to a watch one is entitled to examine it throughout
as one would examine a watch. All watches testify to intelligence and
design, but besides good watches there are bad ones, there are those
which are made of cheap materials, rudely put together, with showy
exteriors and unreliable works. Every watch, if examined by experts in
mechanism, in art, and so forth, would reveal the characteristics of
its designer and maker, and these characteristics would not always be
admirable. They would rarely, in fact, be altogether admirable. If we
apply these methods of inquiry to a universe which contains malarial
mosquitoes, slave-making ants, snakes, earthquakes, and all the pests
which blight and deform life without calling forth any strong or noble
qualities to carry on the contest with them, we shall go where Paley
certainly never intended to lead us, but we shall go there by Paley’s
road. The fact is that these methods are altogether fantastic and
inapplicable. The universe is not made like a watch. When we observe a
human being or one of the higher animals we say, ‘He has such and such
qualities; he is faithful, false, brave, cowardly, diligent, indolent,
strong, weak, beautiful or ugly,’ but we do not think of referring
his qualities back to certain attributes of an unknown maker of his
physical and mental organism. A philosophy worthy of the name has
always tended to regard the world as in some sense a vital organism,
and has asked ‘What is it?’ rather than ‘What does it prove about some
other being?’ “How green must be the maker of all grass” was quite
a legitimate satire on all such attempts to deduce the qualities of
a hypothetical creator from the phenomena of the universe. Thus the
mistake of Paley and his school was fundamental. It was the mistake of
seeking God in fragmentary phenomena—the same mistake, essentially, as
that rebuked by Christ, by which every calamity or material blessing
is regarded as a ‘judgment’ or a reward. His method, if applied with
thorough-going consistency, destroys its own basis, for the One and
the Many, the Whole and the Parts, cannot be apprehended at one and
the same time by one and the same faculty of any human mind. Looking
at phenomena alone, and thinking in that sphere, we cannot say that
God made the world but rather that the world is becoming divine.
Philosophically and religiously, God is all in all—historically, He is
not the beginning, He is rather the end, the end in which the whole
history is resumed.
Paley’s elaborate argument was felt by the orthodox of his time to be
called for, even though at this period his way of thinking was popular.
The conception of the world as a vital organism was as yet, indeed,
very vague, and unsupported by any detailed, scientific scrutiny of the
facts of nature, but it was in the air—it had always been in the air;
it always held the minds of cautious students back from a complete
surrender to the facile but illusory way of thinking typified by
Paley’s famous analogy of the universe and the watch. Bacon knew that
species could be transformed by the action of a new environment.[4]
Goethe had a clear conception of the evolution theory, based on a study
of organic structure. Erasmus Darwin, in 1794, had uttered the great
and final word: “The world has been generated rather than created.”[5]
Lamarck’s Philosophie Zoologique was not published till 1809, nine
years after Paley’s Natural Theology, but his conception of the
development of special characteristics by habitual exercise and their
transmission by inheritance had been freely mooted in Paley’s day, for
Paley frequently takes occasion to combat it. Even the conception of
natural selection as an agency in the formation of types of being may
be traced in a fantastic form as far back as to Empedocles,[6] while
Plato, or whoever composed a striking couplet attributed to him in the
Greek Anthology, had divined the plasticity of natural forms. “Time,”
he wrote, “sways the whole world; time has power in its prolonged
lapse to change the names and shapes, the nature and the destiny of
things.”[7]
Fifty years after the appearance of Paley’s work, the grandson of
Erasmus Darwin wrote ‘No thoroughfare’ on the entrance to Paley’s line
of speculation, and closed it to mankind for ever. He did this in two
ways—first by marshalling from his studies of comparative anatomy and
of embryology an extraordinary volume of convincing evidence for the
_fact_ of the mutability of natural forms, and secondly by his attempt
to establish a plausible _method_ by which the change and development
of organs and types might actually have taken place. The method, summed
up in the phrases ‘natural selection’ and ‘survival of the fittest,’
was what really caught the attention of the world, and gave his
doctrine the wings which carried it into almost every sphere of human
thought. However we take it, it was certainly an immense contribution
to the organization of knowledge, but whether it is really what it
first seemed to be, the basic fact at the bottom of all the phenomena
of evolution, is coming to look more and more doubtful in the light of
later researches.[8]
This question will have to be considered later on in the course of
this study, and in relation to its main inquiry, which is this: What
precisely was the change in philosophic and religious outlook brought
about by the full and final establishment of the doctrine of evolution?
Where has evolution left the argument from design? Must we study nature
as a mass of unrelated phenomena, or can we discern, through these, any
fundamental unity to which they stand in organic relation; and if we
can, what is the nature of this unity?
It will be useful in the first place to have before us a typical
specimen of Paley’s method. I shall choose as an example the case which
he considered so striking that he deemed it almost sufficient in itself
to bear the whole weight of his argument In his ninth chapter, ‘On the
Muscles,’ he writes:—
“The next circumstance which I shall mention under this head of
muscular arrangement is so decisive a mark of intention, that it
always appeared to me to supersede, in some measure, the necessity
of seeking for any other observation upon the subject; and that
circumstance is, the tendons which pass from the leg to the foot
being bound down by a ligament to the ankle. The foot is placed at
a considerable angle with the leg. It is manifest, therefore, that
flexible strings, passing along the interior of the angle, if left
to themselves, would, when stretched, start from it. The obvious
preventive is to tie them down. And this is done, in fact. Across
the instep, or rather just above it, the anatomist finds a strong
ligament, _under_ which the tendons pass to the foot. The effect of
the ligament as a bandage can be made evident to the senses; for if
it be cut, the tendons start up. The simplicity, yet the clearness
of this contrivance, its exact resemblance to established resources
of art, place it amongst the most indubitable manifestations of
design with which we are acquainted.
“There is also a further use to be made of the present example, and
that is, as it precisely contradicts the opinion that the parts of
animals may have been formed by what is called _appetency_, _i.e._
endeavour perpetuated and imperceptibly working its effect through
an incalculable series of generations. We have here no endeavour
but the reverse of it—a constant renitency and reluctance. The
endeavour is all the other way. The pressure of the ligament
constrains the tendons; the tendons react upon the pressure of the
ligament. It is impossible that the ligament should ever have been
generated by the exercise of the tendon, or in the course of that
exercise, forasmuch as the force of the tendon perpendicularly
resists the fibre, which confines it, and is constantly
endeavouring not to form, but to rupture and displace, the threads
of which the ligament is composed.”
Paley’s account of the function of the annular ligament at the ankle is
correct, and strikingly put. A similar ligament occurs at the wrist,
and navvies who have hard muscular work to do in digging and shovelling
are wont to reinforce this ligament and to keep it from rupture by a
leather strap round the wrist. The strap performs exactly the same
function as the ligament, and from Paley’s point of view one is as
artificial, as much a ‘contrivance,’ as the other. But his point of
view is wrong. He conceives the Creator as having at his disposal
fully formed elements or materials—sinews, bones, ligaments, and the
like—and assembling them into a working mechanism. In fact, however,
none of these things is now what it was originally—time, as Plato says,
has changed its “name and shape.” The annular ligaments are recognized
by modern anatomists as having originated in special thickenings of
the fascial sheaths of the adjoining muscles of the wrist and ankle.
They had a function which was not originally connected with keeping
down the long tendons that run along the interior angle of the leg and
foot. Contractility, as biologists tell us, is a fundamental property
of living protoplasm; and it is easy to imagine that, at the very
beginning of the formation of muscular structure and bone articulation,
two lines of contractile force might cross each other and thus permit
the gradual evolution of the present arrangement, nature continually
visiting with disability and extinction those individuals in whom
the resisting power of the muscles which were eventually to form the
annular ligament was unduly feeble, and giving a better chance of life,
and of the propagation of their kind, to those in whom it was strong.
The instance, in fact, is one of those in which the explanation of
development by natural selection is most obvious and plausible.
In his second paragraph Paley touches on the theory of “appetency,” the
supposed tendency of natural structure to alter and adapt itself on the
lines indicated by the actual exercise of function, and in consequence
of that exercise. This is practically the theory since identified with
the name of Lamarck. Paley scarcely does it justice, for no Lamarckian
would suggest that a muscle could, in the course of its exercise,
develop the ligament whose function is to restrain it. The ligament
would be developed by its own exercise. But as Lamarckism will be
discussed later on, the issue as between these rival theories need not
be debated here.
Let us set beside Paley’s argument on the annular ligament of the
ankle a passage from a modern scientific work, Strasburger’s Text
Book of Botany. It will introduce us, from the side of the strictest
scientific observation and of the fullest acceptance of the evolution
theory, to the same kind of problems as those discussed in Paley’s
Natural Theology, and it will raise in a very distinct and unevadable
fashion the question, what we are to think of the power manifested in
the operations of Nature. In the introduction to his work, in which
Dr. Strasburger had associated with him three other eminent German
botanists, we find the following remarkable passage dealing with
circumstances observed to exist in the ‘phylogenetic’ or tribal (as
opposed to the ‘ontogenetic’ or individual) history of plant species:—
“Although the great importance of natural selection in the
development of the organic world has been fully recognised by
most naturalists, the objection has been raised that it alone is
not a sufficient explanation of all the different processes in
the phylogeny of an organism. Attention has been called to such
organs as would be incapable of exercising their function until
in an advanced stage of development, and so could not originally
have been of any advantage in a struggle for existence. How could
natural selection tend to develop an organ which would be useless
so long as it was still in a rudimentary condition? This objection
has led to the supposition of an internal force residing in the
substance of the organisms themselves and controlling their
development in certain definite directions. Many naturalists indeed
have gone so far as to affirm that only the less advantageous
qualities have been affected by the struggle for existence, while
the more advantageous have been uninfluenced by it”[9]
One can easily imagine what a modern Paley bent on reconciling
orthodoxy and evolution would say to this. He would cry, Design,
forethought, intelligence—here is the clearest evidence of it!
And indeed there are many modern biologists who do not shrink from
the admission that the processes of nature must ultimately be
interpreted in terms of will or intention, not in terms of chance or
blind mechanism. Thus, to the Darwinian argument that organs can be
and are, demonstrably, formed by gradual adaptation to surrounding
conditions without assuming the necessity of purposeful design, it
is often replied that the very fact of adaptability is itself one of
the strongest evidences if not of design at least of purpose. And J.
v. Uexküll, who describes life as consisting essentially in the fact
that it proceeds according to design (_planmässig_), has the following
remarkable passage in his Experimental Biology[10]:—
“When we look backwards, every phase in the process of development
seems to us to have proceeded in a strictly causal manner from
physico-chemical processes. But when we turn to look forward, it
is certain that the physico-chemical processes if left to their
own causality must immediately bring about the destruction of the
organism. In fact, the clearest definition we can give of dying
is to say of an organism that its processes now go on no longer
teleologically (_zweckmässig_) but only causally.”[11]
Yet the modern Paley would be rash in arguing from facts like these
(supposing them fully established) to the conscious, intelligent
contrivance of a single foreseeing Mind. For very few things in this
universe appear to be done as a presiding, conscious intelligence
would do them. Conscious intelligence would not have evolved the
giant armadillo only that the whole species might be destroyed by
the sabre-toothed tiger, and would not have armed the sabre-toothed
tiger for the attack on the armadillo in such a way that when he had
exterminated the victim-species the formation of his teeth rendered
it impossible for him to prey on any other animal.[12] Conscious
intelligence would not have allowed the relic of a disused organ, in
the shape of the vermiform appendix, to be a constant source of danger
and suffering to countless generations of men—danger against which no
exercise of prudence or energy can secure them.
Let us examine a couple of other crucial cases. The embryo of every
mammalian animal is prepared in the womb for the life it is to live
under wholly different conditions. Lungs are formed when there is no
air for them to breathe, eyes when there is no light, a digestive
system when nourishment is derived as yet direct from the mother’s
blood. This capacity for anticipatory development during a period
of gestation or incubation becomes absolutely necessary for the
maintenance of life as soon as animals, ceasing to multiply by merely
dividing in two, become more highly organized and have to devote
special germ-cells to reproductive purposes. Here is certainly purpose,
or, as I should prefer to call it, _directivity_—here we recognize
what Reinke calls the X-factor in nature. But conscious, intelligent
contrivance? We must recollect how many of these embryos are destined
to perish at birth or before attaining any appreciable degree of
independent life. Would not intelligence foresee that, and bring to
birth only what was destined to endure?
Again, there are certain species of butterflies which have put
on a coloration and a form the effect of which is to aid them in
evading the attacks of birds. They were not created so; they have
become so; and the precise manner of the becoming will be fully
discussed in a later chapter. Let us assume for the moment that this
adaptation did not occur by a series of lucky accidents or by any
merely mechanical process. Are we, then, bound to attribute it to
intelligent contrivance? The question will be best answered by simply
putting a case which admits of no doubt. Suppose there were an island
in which there were no birds, except such as prey on fishes or on
each other, but never on insects. The butterflies on this island, if
there were any, would certainly show no trace of protective form or
coloration. But at some time or other insect-eating birds might be
introduced to the island, as the English sparrow has been introduced
in Australia. Then, if the extermination of the butterflies did not
proceed too rapidly, we might expect, in the course of generations, to
see protective adaptations assumed. But could we expect to see them
assumed _in anticipation_ of the advent of the destroyers? We could
not. Naturalists, however much they may differ, as they do differ, upon
the question as to how protective adaptations actually take place,
would all agree that they could not possibly take place in anticipation
of needs not yet present. If they did, we should have a miracle, and
where miracle comes in knowledge goes out. The cases where conscious,
intelligent contrivance would be unmistakably recognizable are just the
cases which never occur. The signal service rendered by the champions
of the evolution theory,
Quos nec fama Deûm, nec fulmina, nec minitanti
Murmure compressit Cœlum,
is that they conquered the realm of organic nature for true knowledge,
and gave the drama of its development a new and profound interest,
by showing with an uncompromising courage only equalled by the
extraordinarily minute and patient research which justified it, that
the _apparent_ instances of divine contrivance with which nature teems
must be explained by the responsiveness, the adaptability, of living
protoplasm. Needless to say, this demonstration does not in the least
_disprove_ the existence of God as a supreme, conscious, personal
Intelligence.[13] But it does forbid us to deduce the existence of such
a Being from the observation of natural phenomena. A living, developing
universe has been set in the place of a Divine Mechanician operating on
dead matter.
The question, what conception we are to form of the forces of
evolution, will be more fully discussed in the succeeding chapters on
Biology, as a foundation for views which will afterwards be put forward
in relation to Ethics and to Art.
But first we must clear the ground a little by considering what it
really is that we are to study, and if it be possible to study it at
all. Nature-study if it is to be possible must begin, and if it is to
be fruitful must end, in something which is not strictly the study of
nature, but which we call Philosophy.
One of the most brilliant examples of that union of philosophic
speculation with nature-study which is so marked a feature of the
German thought of our day is H. von Keyserling’s work, The Structure of
the World.[14] Keyserling begins by laying it down as a postulate of
thinking that “The Universe is a rounded, inwardly coherent Whole.”
A postulate of thinking this is indeed, and more than that—it
is a postulate of living. If under all the variety and apparent
discontinuity of the universe there does not lie _One_ all-pervading
and unifying Power, then meditation and action are alike vain, for none
can tell the hour when some incursion of the unknown may not shatter
our cosmos into chaos, or leave us in a new universe with the edifice
of our past experience, the familiar home of the spirit, lying in ruins
around us. Every one assumes, consciously or unconsciously, that there
is such a Power, that the universe is One, that however mysterious,
however little known or understood it may be, it is not essentially
deceptive or incalculable. The savage and the philosopher alike assume
this, and act upon the assumption. It is perhaps possible not merely
to assume but to prove it. For let us try to imagine what would be the
case if it were not true. If the Principle, the ultimate Reality of the
universe, be not one it must be at least dual. There must be not less
than two principles. Now there are only three ways in which these two
principles—and what we say will hold good for any greater number—can
be related to each other. They must either (1) be identical, or (2)
they must be complementary, each possessing something which the other
is lacking in, or (3) they must negate each other and be mutually
contradictory and exclusive. But two absolutely identical principles,
if we can conceive such a thing, are indistinguishable from one. Two
or more complementary principles, again, make up, when taken together,
but a single whole, as in the Christian Trinity. Therefore if the
universe be really dual, its two principles must negate and contradict
each other. Now these two hostile principles must either be equal
in force or one must be more powerful than the other. In the latter
event, seeing that they divide between them the sum total of existence
and thus stand in naked and essential antagonism, with no place for
evasion, and no auxiliary or modifying forces to call in, it follows
of necessity that if one surpassed the other by even the smallest
conceivable excess, it must, in eternity, master it and reduce it to
impotence. So by this road we come back to unity again. If, however, we
suppose our two forces to be co-equal and co-eternal, we have to ask
ourselves what we mean by supposing them to be antagonistic. Antagonism
can only arise when there is action. But two equal forces acting in
direct contradiction to each other must mutually cancel each other, and
the result is zero. On such an hypothesis the universe could never have
come into being. It may also be pointed out that the hypothesis itself
seems to be irrational. For action means the production of a change of
some kind, change in the nature or situation of objects. But if one
of our forces is producing changes of a certain kind and the other
producing changes of another kind, then they are not contradictory
but complementary. The only real antagonism between two ultimate
principles must consist in one of them being identified with action,
change, life, the other with immobility and death. But a principle of
immobility and death, if there could be such a thing, could not also be
a principle of action, not even of destructive action, for to act at
all would be a contradiction of its own nature. It would begin and end
in total _in_action, and the field would be clear for the other Power,
just as if nothing else existed. It follows that, in the living and
moving universe around us, there cannot be any such thing as an active
principle of destruction and death. We are obliged to perceive Being
under the guise of Becoming and Becoming under the guise of Change and
Progression. This is a process taking place in the visible and temporal
order of things and capable, under certain conditions, of partial
arrest or retrogression. But the Whole, regarded as a whole, can be
and can contain nothing but life, and must under all its diversity
(which is an aspect of life) be One. It is this unity which alone can
make intelligible and rational the diversity of which every study of
life must treat. It is my endeavour in the present work to bring into
clear light some important aspects of this unity, as revealed in the
inter-relations of the parts of which, to our eyes, it seems to be
composed.[15]