Henry Edward Crampton

“ Physics, chemistry, astronomy, geology, and the like describe the concrete world of matter and energy, while the biological sciences deal with the structure, development, interrelationships, and vital activities of animals and plants. Surely knowledge has evolved with the advance in all of these subjects from decade to decade and from year to year. And just as surely must evolution continue, for the world has not stopped developing, and therefore the great principles of science must undergo further changes, even though they are the best summaries that can be formulated at the present time. ”

“ This may be so, but science endeavors only to find out the truth; it cannot alter truth, nor does it seek to do so. We might well wish that the world were different in many respects and that we were free from the control of many natural laws besides that of evolution, but if the real is what it is, then our duty is plain before us; as we think more widely and deeply on the basis of ripened experience, it becomes ever clearer that a knowledge of human history gives the only sure guidance for human life. ”

“ Natural selection, as the whole of this intricate process, is simply trial and error on a gigantic scale. Nature is such that thousands of varying individuals are produced in order that a mere handful or only one survivor may be chosen to bear the burden of carrying on the species for another generation. The effect of nature's process is judicial, as it were. We may liken the many and varied conditions of life to as many jurymen, before which every living thing must appear for judgment as to its fitness or lack of it. ”

“ Surely an organism that failed to live an efficient individual life would be ineffective in reproduction, so that from one point of view everything an animal does is tributary to the culminating act performed for the larger good of the life of the whole species. It is a nice balance that nature has worked out in Amoeba, as well as in all other cases, between the personal life of the individual, complete only when the final process of multiplication supervenes, and this process itself, which demands an efficient performance, even though this is destructive of the performer. ”

“ Just so a living organism is an ever changing, ever renewed, and ever destroyed mass of little particles—the atoms of the inorganic world which combine and come to life for a time, but which return inevitably to the world of lifeless things. This is one of the most fundamental facts of biology. The independence of a living thing like a human being or a crustacean is a product of the imagination. How can we be independent of the environment when we are interlocked in so many ways with inorganic nature? Our very substance with its energies has been wrested from the environment ”

“ In my judgment the unbroken transformation of a child's mind that exhibits only instinct and intelligence into an adult's mind with its power of reasoning, is far more conclusive as proof of mental evolution than the inference drawn from the comparisons we have made above of the adult psychological phenomena of man, ape, cat, and fish. It is surely natural for such mental transformations to take place, for they do take place in the vast majority of human beings; when they do not, in cases where the brain fails to mature, we speak of unnatural or diseased minds. ”

“ No reasoning is necessary to tell us that organic transformation is a real and a natural process. We see it everywhere about us and we ourselves have come to be what we are by a natural history of change. Can we consistently deny that it is possible for a species to alter in the long course of time when a few brief weeks are sufficient for the new-laid egg of the fowl to develop into a fledgling? Many indeed strain at the gnat of the longer process in the past when without hesitation they recognize the real and obvious fact of individual development in a brief period. ”

“ What must we think of the ethical status of such a conscious power who causes countless millions of creatures to come into the world and ruthlessly compels them to battle with one another until a cruel and tragic death ends their existence? ”

“ But development delivers its evidence relating to this matter with telling and impressive force. How can we doubt the possibility of an evolution of higher animals from ancestors as simple as Hydra and Amoeba when a frog and a cat, like all other complicated organisms, begin individual existence as single cells, and pass through gastrula stages? If we deny it, we contradict the evidence of our senses, for the development is actually accomplished by the transformation of a single cell into a double-walled sac, and of this into different and more intricate organic mechanisms. ”

“ On the contrary, as we trace the development of social organization from its earliest rudiments it becomes ever clearer that evolution has been continuous, and that during later ages there has been no suspension of the natural laws which earlier produced the human type of organism. The lessons we have learned are by no means to be ignored from this point forward; all of our conceptions of human biological history must be kept in mind, for anything new that we may learn is superadded to the rest,—it cannot disturb or alter the foundations already laid. ”

“ So it is with the matter of method; it is unnecessary to go beyond the observations of a day or a week of human life to find forces at work, as real and vital as animal existence and organic life themselves. This is true, because evolution is true, and because the lives of all creatures follow one consistent law. Our task is therefore much more simple than most people suppose it to be; let us look about us and classify what we may observe, increasing our knowledge from the wide array of equally natural facts supplied by the biologist. ”

“ Our civilization has resulted in a development of human sympathy as an emotional outgrowth of necessary altruism; this motive directs us through charitable institutions and hospitals to prolong countless lives which are more or less inefficient, but which do not render the whole body politic incompetent in its struggle for existence.
Nature then has itself attended to the development and institution of ethics. As we look back over the long series of stages leading to our own system of conduct the most striking feature of the history is the increasing power of self-control or inhibition. ”

“ Evolution as a complete doctrine commands every one to live a life of service as full as hereditary endowments and surrounding circumstances will permit. Thus we are taught that the immediate problems of life ought to concern us more than questions as to the ultimate nature of the universe and of existence.
Every one can find something worth while in the lessons of evolution, summarized in the foregoing statements. The atheist, who declines to personify the ultimate powers of the universe, may, nevertheless, find direction for his life in the principles brought to light by science. ”

“ Having then all the facts of animal natural history at his disposal, and the uniform principles in each body of fact that demonstrate evolution, it is small wonder that the evolutionist seems to dogmatize when he asserts that descent with adaptive and divergent modification is true for all species of living things. The case is complete as it stands to-day, while it is even more significant that every new discovery falls into line with what is already known, and takes its natural place in the all-inclusive doctrine of organic evolution. ”

“ The doctrine of evolution enjoins us to learn the rules of the great game of life which we must play, as science reveals them to us. It is well to remember that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, but because evolution is true always and everywhere, an understanding of its workings in any department of thought and life clears the vision of other realms of knowledge and action. ”

“ The young workers serve at first as doorkeepers, and only later do they take the field in the search for nectar and pollen, and work as house-builders. Each individual performs its special task for its own benefit and for the weal of all; each possesses an equal right to share in the prosperity of the whole community so long as it acts altruistically as well as egoistically. And just as the welfare of Hydra is superior to that of any one of its constituent cells, so the well-being of a hive of bees may be safeguarded only by the actual sacrifice of some of its members. ”

“ Yet a still more wonderful fact is revealed by the study of the very earliest stages of individual development. The human embryo begins its very existence as a single cell,—nothing more and nothing less; in general structure the human egg, like the eggs of all other many-celled organisms, is just one of the unitary building blocks of the entire organic world. And yet the egg may ultimately become the adult man. Does this mean that man and all the other higher forms have evolved from protozoa in the course of long ages? Science asks if it can mean anything else. ”

“ The most casual survey of the peoples that we know best because of our own individual nearness to them enables us to realize that the races now upon the earth have not existed forever and ever, or even for the age of 6000 years as contended by Archbishop Ussher. They have all come into existence as such, and they differ from their known antecedents; so that at the very outset common-sense leads us to accept evolution as true, if we admit that human races have changed during the course of recent centuries. ”

“ According to this general conception, "life is something like an engineer who climbs into the cab of the locomotive and pulls the levers which make it go," as health might supposedly be regarded as something that does not inhere in well-being, but gets into the body to alter it. But is this conception really justified by the facts of animal structure and physiology? Let us recall the steps of our analysis. The living organism is a collection of differentiated parts, the organs; the life of an organism is a series of activities of the several organic systems and organs. ”

“ Nothing in natural history seems to be surer than evolution, and yet the final solution of evolutionary problems defies the most subtle skill of the trained analyst of nature's order. No single human mind can contain all the facts of a single small department of natural science, nor can one mind comprehend fully the relations of all the various departments of knowledge, but nevertheless evolution seems to describe the history of all facts and their relations throughout the entire field of knowledge. ”

“ At the present juncture, the human species presents itself as a subject for organic analysis and classification, merely as a physical organism. Just as the study of locomotives must begin with the detailed structure of machines in the workshop before they can be profitably understood as working mechanisms, so the physical evolution of mankind must first be made intelligible before it is possible to prosecute successfully the studies dealing with the psychology, social relations, and higher conceptions that seem at first to be the exclusive properties of our species. ”

“ We come now to the second element of the whole process of evolution, namely, what we may call overproduction or excessive multiplication. Like variation and so many other phenomena of nature, this is so real and natural that it escapes our attention until science places it before us in a new light. The normal rate of reproduction in all species of animals is such that if it were unchecked, any kind of organism would cumber the earth or fill the sea in a relatively short time. ”