EVOLUTION, ETHICS, AND RELIGION.
The recognition of the ultimate tendencies of evolution suggests two
further enquiries, one as to the personal relation with the far-off
result, and one as to the origin of such a definite progress.
Perhaps the consideration of the former question is bound up in the
latter. Nevertheless, within the scope of the former more limited
enquiry, the Comtists are content to rest. For them the narrow limits of
history and its immediate outlook are sufficient. What is actually
recorded of humanity, and what is actually revealed in it, together with
the indications of its possibilities, suffice for the creed of the
Comtist. The Positivist produced by Evolution worships his Cause under
the name of humanity, and works towards Mr. Spencer's evolutionist
ideal. He seeks no justification in philosophy. The product of
Evolution--he acts from inward impulse and requires no authority. He has
none to appeal to in the inculcation of his worship, but the natural
response to be found in the hearts of those who occupy the same
intellectual and sympathetic position. But this is after all only a
partial grasp of the fundamental problem of history. It is an
abandonment, temporary or otherwise, of the intellectual problem,
although it is a recognition of the onward sweep of humanitarian
Evolution. The history and the tendencies are alike sought to be
explained by the philosophy of the Evolutionist. What, then, is the
position of the Evolutionist in regard to the problem of religion, and
what practical bearing has it upon Ethics or moral obligation?
The answer to these questions depends upon what is meant by the theory
of Evolution. If by Evolution is meant a complete system of explanations
by which all the events comprised in all departments of human knowledge,
stretching throughout the whole of history recorded and surmised, are
intelligibly accounted for as the results of the interrelation of
primordial factors, of which we have a clear apprehension, insomuch that
the logical order becomes a picture of the historical order, then our
estimate of Evolution depends upon our estimate of the original factors.
If they are held to be some seventy in number, and to be those elements
of which a full account is given in chemistry, and to be subject to
general laws, such as those described in works on physics, then our
regard for Evolution must be one due to the reverence we possess for
chemistry, electricity, heat, gravitation, and the like, and our conduct
must be made to conform--if we wish to coincide with the eventual
tendencies of evolution--with what we judge to be the ultimate
tendencies of the evolution of these factors, namely, their ultimate
equilibration in universal quiescence. Life, according to this view, is
an interruption of the process, and a contradiction of cosmical
intention.
This view of evolution is not saved by the theory that behind these
chemical affinities and physical relations there is an unknowable power
of which they are but the manifestations: for the power is not
unknowable if its manifestations are limited to these known
manifestations; and if they are not so limited, but operate in other
ways with new factors, not comprised in our estimate of them, then our
explanatory system is at fault, and has to be abandoned or amended. The
recognition of an unknowable power behind chemistry and physics, yet
limited by the laws of chemistry and physics, is equal only to our
estimate of chemistry and physics. We could but address it as Oh my Lord
Chemistry! Oh my Lord Physics!
But we have shown in our previous criticisms that this view of
evolution, as dealing with purely physical factors, is inadequate to
explain the cosmical histories. We have criticised adversely Mr.
Spencer's attempts so to explain biological development; and we have
indicated the necessity for supposing that other superior factors are
present in biological evolution. We do not know that Mr. Spencer
disputes it--his work is too vague and inconsistent to enable us to say
precisely what he does and what he does not teach. But the admission of
additional factors does not destroy the theory of evolution. Darwin and
Spencer and the modern school have established, beyond dispute, the fact
of orderly development in the cosmos. We are forced, therefore, to admit
both evolution and the presence in it, so far as Biology is concerned,
and probably also as regards all the changes anterior to the beginnings
of life, of a factor over and above the chemical and physical factors.
The nature of this factor we do not know, nor do we know how, as having
an orderly relation to chemical and physical events, its law is to be
expressed in such a manner as to enable us to understand how organisms
arose and were developed. Here, indeed, we can recognise a power, and an
inscrutable one: but inasmuch as it is inscrutable it spoils our
philosophy--our systems of explanations--and laughs at our formulas.
But after all, if we succeed in establishing purposive actions as
incidents in a process of equilibration, what have we gained? We have
gained a scientific explanation of all purposive actions as well as of
all actions of organisms in general. They all stand upon the same
footing--that is to say they are all equally explicable as parts of the
universal process. They are all equally equilibrations, and so justified
in their order of occurrence. They rank alike as incidents in a line of
causation explicable by the law of equilibration.
Apparently all that is, is right. Equilibration does not recognise any
distinction as to the quality of actions. This distinction can be
explained by equilibration, but cannot be justified by it as a law for
future conduct, any more than any other incident of the course of
equilibration. If certain laws of living become established, then moving
equilibria capable of recognising this fact must act accordingly--they
must adapt themselves to the environment: but this does not prevent the
organism from adapting the environment to itself, if it can, by changing
it or overcoming it--this is merely a matter of equilibration. The law
of Biology will allow it to cope with an adverse environment in many
ways, namely, by conformity, by escape so as to preserve its
individuality, and by altering or overcoming the environment. If the
forces of the environment be powerful and omnipresent, then conformity
is the only resource. It is only a matter of superiority of force, and
the resulting conformity is merely a matter of equilibration. It is not
that equilibration lends any special sanctity or quality to certain
actions. Social pressure coerces individual pressure--the mutual
coercion of society is equilibration--the result of this equilibration,
whatever it is, is a variable Ethics. The recognition of great duties
and great faults, the facts of moral approbation and condemnation, the
phenomena of a private and public conscience are all explicable as
equilibrations: but since whatever is, is an equilibration, it is not
from the laws of equilibration that any established moral distinction or
obligation can be justified for guidance for a single day in advance.
There is no universality, either in place or time in Ethics thus viewed.
The justification of Ethics from the evolution point of view must be
sought on other grounds than in that of a cosmical equilibration.
It is difficult to say what support is rendered to practical Ethics by
the theory of Evolution. According to it, Ethics is a history and a
prediction; but failing the existence in any individual (as the result
of a growth) of the moral sense for which Evolution professes to
account, the prediction only applies to future generations; and it is
difficult to see that practical Ethics has for such a person any
intrinsic authority. And even if the moral sense, and social pressure
(which are respectively the intrinsic and the extrinsic authority, for
practical Ethics) are sufficient of themselves to enforce moral conduct,
then the understanding of how they both came to possess such a power of
command, lends them no additional authority, but rather tends, at first
sight, to detract from their sacred prestige. The confidence of the
philosopher is however soon restored, when he considers that despite the
failure of his theory to intellectually establish moral enforcements,
nevertheless, the great forces which have produced both the intrinsic
and the extrinsic ethical authorities are still at work, and must more
and more prevail. If these are natural growths the movement in the
hearts of men, and in societarian organization, will ever prevail over
and above all reasoning about them. Individual opposition and
restiveness will be levelled before the might of the advance. The
individual must obey or perish; indeed he must himself change and become
part of the coercive power.
Thus it will be found that the apprehension which Mr. Spencer expresses
in his preface, as to the loss of a controlling agency in the decay and
death of an older regulative system is not met by the establishment of a
new controlling agency which takes the place of the discarded authority,
but may be met by the fact disclosed in evolution, that whatever
authority men may recognise, nay, even if they do not recognise any, it
is all the same--they are part and parcel of an onward growth against
which it is useless to rebel. The moral authority is the conviction of
the inevitable. Thus evolution dispels the fear of a moral anarchy by
showing the necessity for the existence of present and future moral
order, ensured alike by extrinsic social organization, and by a no less
certain prevalence of intrinsic motives. Thus, though evolution lends
but little additional theoretical force to moral argument, it shows
forth the power of natural ethical authority, and declares with
convincing efficacy, "magna est veritas et prævalebit."
The moral imperative is found to be firstly extrinsic in social
pressure, and secondly intrinsic in altruistic sympathy. These are the
only authorities competent to say: "Thus shalt thou do, and thus shalt
thou not do." Evolution establishes no absolute morality. It is always
relative to the surroundings, and it differs according to the stage of
civilization. The more nearly the conduct approaches the relatively
perfect the more truly ideal is it. The imagined ideal is not so perfect
as the relatively perfect. According as a necessity is universal, so is
the degree of moral enforcement which accompanies it, and the degree of
accord in the recognition of its imperativeness. The sanctity of life,
the condemnation of these who infringe it, the commendation of those who
promote it are of first eminence. Liberty, Property, and other
essentials receive little less recognition; and so on by degrees down to
the small details of everyday life. The kind of moral imperative is the
same throughout, the degree of enforcement differing according to the
varying importance of the actions.
As this point very properly comes in the Evolutionist's view of
religion. We take, as our text on this subject, the speech by Professor
Fiske at the Spencer banquet held in New York, November 9th, 1882, and
since published in the form of a tractette.[15]
Professor Fiske here pursues Mr. Spencer's faulty plan of generalising
all religions, and assuming the common or fundamental content as a true
finding, besides holding that the fundamental truths of science are
identical with this final deliverance of religion. It is not that
Professor Fiske's argument is bad, but that it is badly put. If we
confine ourselves to the scientific view, and say that the universe
manifests an orderly development; that it is probably altogether the
result of the relations of primordial factors; but that of these we can
form no adequate conception although, nevertheless, they undoubtedly
contained something of the elements of a subjective nature--then we do
not transgress the scientific view. Neither do we so transgress when, by
inductions from the history of man, we assert that the law of
development of the subjective is towards altruistic sympathy,
quantitative increase of life, and social harmony or equilibration. Mr.
Matthew Arnold's recognition of "an eternal power, not ourselves, that
makes for righteousness" is as near an approach to the truth as we can
get. Mr. Spencer's formula should be "an unknowable power, not
ourselves, that makes towards equilibrium." The question, thereupon
arises, Is the subjective a factor in a process of equilibration, and is
righteousness subjective equilibration? The question also arises in the
latter case, Is the "makes for" or "makes towards" a teleological aiming
at an end, or a process determined completely by antecedent factors of
which it is but the outcome?
It is difficult to imagine under a system of evolution, even if an
universal subjective factor be admitted, the operation of a teleological
activity as ordinarily understood. Nevertheless, we find a teleological
faculty evolved in man. And even if we accept Mr. Matthew Arnold's
description, the question arises, Has the eternal power a conscious
intention of making towards righteousness from the first or from any
time? Or is it implicit in the original relations of the subjective to
the chemical and physical that it makes through Biology towards
righteousness--is righteousness merely another expression for a
completed biological law involved in the original relations of atoms
with an omnipresent subjective and relative factor?
And again, what, scientifically viewed, is our personal relation to
that inscrutable power which makes for righteousness? Here comes in the
ethical problem as affected by the religious, and both as affected by
our views of evolution. Professor Fiske says of the propositions
recognised by all religions "that men ought to do certain things and
ought to refrain from doing certain other things; and that the reason
why some things are wrong to do and other things are right to do, is in
some mysterious but very real way connected with the existence and
nature of this divine Power."
The fact that personal responsibility to the inscrutable Power belongs
to the essence of all religions is one thing, and the establishment of
it as a scientific truth is another. The fact of its existence and of
its universality is a presumption in its favour, but is not more than a
presumption. What has science to say to it? With this point Professor
Fiske next deals. He says that science, after all its searchings, finds,
in its ultimate enquiries, not only inexplicable laws whose effects it
can calculate though the laws themselves remain unexplained, but also
long processes which are not explicable by the known laws, and which
will probably remain for ever inexplicable. If he does not say so in
those words, we presume that must be what he means: for if he only means
that all cosmical histories are explicable by known laws, these laws
being themselves inexplicable, the inscrutable or Divine Power is only
antecedent to cosmical histories, and is not present in them, nor does
it affect the future. Nevertheless, what Professor Fiske has to say of
the results of scientific enquiry does not amount to much. "The doctrine
of evolution asserts, as the widest and deepest truth which the study of
nature can disclose to us, that there exists a power to which no limit
in time or space is conceivable, and that all the phenomena of the
universe, whether they be what we call material or what we call
spiritual phenomena, are manifestations of this infinite and eternal
Power."
But this scientific truth does not in its mere enunciation bear upon the
question as to our ethical relationship to the Unknown Power. It is only
when we study its spiritual or subjective manifestation as an orderly
development that we can recognise a power to which we owe a moral
obligation. The scientific evidence of moral obligation to the
inscrutable power rests, not upon the recognition of the power of which
the cosmos is a manifestation, nor upon the fact of its inscrutability,
but upon the knowledge of the subjective factor, its manifested history,
and the inductions to be drawn from a study of that history in the laws
of the working of altruistic sympathy, of quantitative life, and of the
harmony of life as already set forth. Professor Fiske's conclusion is a
good statement of this scientific establishment of personal
responsibility to the divine power, and of religion as the crown and
sanction of Ethics.
"Now, science began to return a decisively affirmative answer to such
questions as these when it began, with Mr. Spencer, to explain moral
beliefs and moral sentiments as products of evolution. For clearly, when
you say of a moral belief or a moral sentiment that it is a product of
evolution, you imply that it is something which the universe through
untold ages has been labouring to bring forth, and you ascribe to it a
value proportionate to the enormous effort that it has cost to produce
it. Still more, when with Mr. Spencer we study the principles of right
living as part and parcel of the whole doctrine of the development of
life upon the earth; when we see that, in an ultimate analysis, that is
right which tends to enhance fulness of life, and that is wrong which
tends to detract from fulness of life--we then see that the distinction
between right and wrong is rooted in the deepest foundations of the
universe; we see that the very same forces, subtle, exquisite, and
profound, which brought upon the scene the primal germs of life and
caused them to unfold, which through countless ages of struggle and
death have cherished the life that could live more perfectly, and
destroyed the life that could only live less perfectly, and humanity,
with all its hopes, and fears, and aspirations, has come into being as
the crown of all this stupendous work--we see that these very same
subtle and exquisite forces have wrought into the very fibres of the
universe those principles of right living which it is man's highest
function to put into practice. The theoretical sanction thus given to
right living is incomparably the most powerful that has ever been
assigned in any philosophy of Ethics. Human responsibility is made more
strict and solemn than ever, when the eternal power that lives in every
event of the universe is thus seen to be in the deepest possible sense
the author of the moral law that should guide our lives, and in
obedience to which lies our only guarantee of the happiness which is
incorruptible--which neither inevitable misfortune nor unmerited obloquy
can ever take away."
This appears to us the best statement yet made of the logical results of
the enquiry into Evolution when pursued to its furthest point. Some
enquirers halt at the materialistic point, but an irresistible logic
leads the honest and open-minded enquirer beyond this stage of thought,
and he finds in the recognition of the existence of the subjective, and
in the history of its development, a law of spiritual life. He finds a
law of relation in subjective individuals which induces the
establishment of a quantitative life in the increase of the number of
correspondences with the external world both in Time and Space, and,
which induces also the establishment of altruistic feeling--a feeling
that expands to a greater or less comprehension of the great life of the
subjective throughout the cosmical history; and in this recognition he
finds also a sense of personal responsibility towards a Power which
demands from him a surrender, so that he shall work towards its great
ideal, and find his happiness therein. What more there may be in natural
religion is beyond the scope of our present volume, though we hope at
same future time to treat of this important subject. Our present view is
limited to the consideration of Ethics, and how that science is affected
by the recent large generalisations of Biological history. Certain
definite conclusions of a religious character have come forward as the
result of our studies, and since these have an ethical import, it is
necessary to refer to them in this place.
Nevertheless the study of Evolution assists Ethics, although it can
bring no argument to bear upon those who possess little moral
aspiration, and can add nothing to the forcefulness of social pressure.
Its _point d'appui_ is in the existence in most men of the moral
aspirations. Through them it will work upon individuals of their
environment, and upon the teachers and legislators who form and guide
society. To them is disclosed the fact that their aspirations coincide
with the tendencies of nature. They find that they are going with the
stream, are in fact part of the historic stream itself. They recognise
in society three movements. The first is the growth of altruism or
sympathy. The second is the enlargement of quantititive life. The third
is the approach towards a harmony or equilibration of life. The
recognition of these truths imparts a deeper faith in moral progress,
and gives a greater breadth of view, and a more intelligent and
charitable interpretation of human action. Philosophers, teachers, and
statesmen, understanding the movements of society from age to age, and
discerning the goal to which it inevitably works, can read more
intelligently its primary phases, and assist more skilfully in its
onward movement. The more extended recognition of the social aim
throughout society will guide and increase social pressure in a
corresponding direction, not only in the proper application of social
rewards and penalties, but in the ethical inculcations, and eventually
in the hereditarily established intrinsic motives.
Nor will prophets, the ripest fruit of evolution, be wanting in the
future. Ages produce not only the working results but the religious
voices. There are always men who give utterance to the thought and to
the aspirations of their time. Standing in the fore-front of the
advancing race, they face the mysterious darkness of the future
illumined but by the lights drawn from the Power working through the
subjective history.
FOOTNOTE:
[15] "Evolution and Religion," by John Fiske, M.A., LL.B. London: J. C.
Foulger, The Modern Press, 1882. Price Twopence.