Herbert Spencer

“ If "natural selection is a mere phrase," how can Mr. Darwin, who thought it explained the origin of species, be regarded as wise? Surely it must be more than a mere phrase if it is the key to so many otherwise inexplicable facts. These examples of incongruous thoughts I give to prepare the way; and will now go on to examine the chief propositions which the quoted passage contains.
The Duke of Argyll says that "heredity is the central idea of natural selection." Now it would, I think, be concluded that those who possess the central idea of a thing have some consciousness of the thing. ”

“ The Nebular Hypothesis throws no light on the origin of diffused matter; and diffused matter as much needs accounting for as concrete matter. The genesis of an atom is not easier to conceive than the genesis of a planet. Nay, indeed, so far from making the Universe less a mystery than before, it makes it a greater mystery. Creation by manufacture is a much lower thing than creation by evolution. A man can put together a machine; but he cannot make a machine develop itself. ”

“ Whether we trace mental progression through the grades of the animal kingdom, through the grades of mankind, or through the stages of individual growth; it is obvious that the advance, alike in cognitions and feelings, is, and must be, from the presentative to the more and more remotely representative. It is undeniable that intelligence ascends from those simple perceptions in which consciousness is occupied in localizing and classifying sensations, to perceptions more and more compound, to simple reasoning, to reasoning more and more complex and abstract—more and more remote from sensation. ”

“ The truth of the second position—that Mankind, as a whole, have become more heterogeneous—is so obvious as scarcely to need illustration. Every work on Ethnology, by its divisions and subdivisions of races, bears testimony to it. Even were we to admit the hypothesis that Mankind originated from several separate stocks, it would still remain true, that as, from each of these stocks, there have sprung many now widely-different tribes, which are proved by philological evidence to have had a common origin, the race as a whole is far less homogeneous than it once was. ”

“ In a debate upon the development hypothesis, lately narrated to me by a friend, one of the disputants was described as arguing that as, in all our experience, we know no such phenomenon as transmutation of species, it is unphilosophical to assume that transmutation of species ever takes place. Had I been present I think that, passing over his assertion, which is open to criticism, I should have replied that, as in all our experience we have never known a species created, it was, by his own showing, unphilosophical to assume that any species ever had been created. ”

“ Probably not a few will conclude that here is an attempted solution of the great questions with which Philosophy in all ages has perplexed itself. Let none thus deceive themselves. After all that has been said, the ultimate mystery remains just as it was. The explanation of that which is explicable, does but bring out into greater clearness the inexplicableness of that which remains behind. Little as it seems to do so, fearless inquiry tends continually to give a firmer basis to all true Religion. ”

“ From confirmations thus furnished by sociology to physiology, let us now pass to a suggestion similarly furnished. A factory, or other producing establishment, or a town made up of such establishments, is an agency for elaborating some commodity consumed by society at large; and may be regarded as analogous to a gland or viscus in an individual organism. If we inquire what is the primitive mode in which one of these producing establishments grows up, we find it to be this. A single worker, who himself sells the produce of his labour, is the germ. ”

“ But when we pass from individual forms of life to Life in general, and inquire whether the same law is seen in the ensemble of its manifestations,—whether modern plants and animals are of more heterogeneous structure than ancient ones, and whether the Earth's present Flora and Fauna are more heterogeneous than the Flora and Fauna of the past,—we find the evidence so fragmentary, that every conclusion is open to dispute. ”

“ Not only, however, is the current conception of progress more or less vague, but it is in great measure erroneous. It takes in not so much the reality of progress as its accompaniments—not so much the substance as the shadow. That progress in intelligence seen during the growth of the child into the man, or the savage into the philosopher, is commonly regarded as consisting in the greater number [9] of facts known and laws understood; whereas the actual progress consists in those internal modifications of which this larger knowledge is the expression. ”

“ It is not impossible then that it is the universal law; comprehending not simply those minor modifications which offspring inherit from recent ancestry, but comprehending also those larger modifications distinctive of species, genus, order, class, which they inherit from antecedent races of organisms. And thus it may be that the law of adaptation is the sole law; presiding not only over the differentiation of any race of organisms into several races, but also over the differentiation of the race of organic units composing a germ, into the many races of organic units composing an adult. ”

“ On passing from domestic injunctions to injunctions current in the tribe, we see no less clearly how these emotions produced by approbation and reprobation come to be connected in experience with actions which are beneficial to the tribe, and actions which are detrimental to the tribe; and how there consequently grow up incentives to the one class of actions and prejudices against the other class. From early boyhood the young savage hears recounted the daring deeds of his chief—hears them in words of praise, and sees all faces glowing with admiration. ”

“ As it is, this sound, though not causally related to all these multitudinous and varied past delights, but only often associated with them, can no more be heard without rousing a dim consciousness of these delights, than the voice of an old friend unexpectedly coming into the house can be heard without suddenly raising a wave of that feeling that has resulted from the pleasures of past companionship. If we are to understand the genesis of emotions, either in the individual or in the race, we must take account of this all-important process. ”

“ Darwin, and traced out by him with so much care and skill, can we conclude that, taken alone, it accounts for organic evolution? Has the natural selection of favourable variations been the sole factor? On critically examining the evidence, we shall find reason to think that it by no means explains all that has to be explained. Omitting for the present any consideration of a factor which may be distinguished as primordial, it may be contended that the above-named factor alleged by Dr. Erasmus Darwin and by Lamarck, must be recognized as a co-operator. ”

“ Note, again, that under the discipline of social life—under a comparative abstinence from aggressive actions, and a performance of those naturally-serviceable actions implied by the division of labour—there has been a development of those gentle emotions of which inferior races exhibit but the rudiments. Savages delight in giving pain rather than pleasure—are almost devoid of sympathy; while among ourselves, philanthropy organizes itself in laws, establishes numerous institutions, and dictates countless private benefactions. ”

“ Surely if a single cell may, when subjected to certain influences, become a man in the space of twenty years; there is nothing absurd in the hypothesis that under certain other influences, a cell may, in the course of millions of years, give origin to the human race.
We have, indeed, in the part taken by many scientific men in this controversy of "Law versus Miracle," a good illustration of the tenacious vitality of superstitions. Ask one of our leading geologists or physiologists whether he believes in the Mosaic account of the creation, and he will take the question as next to an insult. ”

“ Martineau next alleges that a fatal difficulty is put in the way of the General Doctrine of Evolution by the existence of a chasm between the living and the not-living. He says:—"But with all your enlargement of data, turn them as you will, at the end of every passage which they explore, the door of life is closed against them still." Here again our ignorance is employed to play the part of knowledge. The fact that we do not know distinctly how an alleged transition has taken place, is transformed into the assumption that no transition has taken place. ”

“ For customs adopted by each generation from the last without thought or inquiry, imply a tendency to imitate which overmasters critical and sceptical tendencies: so maintaining habits for which no reasons can be given. The decrease of this irrational mimicry, strongest in the lowest savage and feeblest in the highest of the civilized, should be studied along with the successively higher stages of social life, as being at once an aid and a hindrance to civilization: an aid in so far as it gives that fixity to the social organization without which a society cannot survive ”

“ As we see in existing barbarous tribes, society in its first and lowest form is a homogeneous aggregation of individuals having like powers and like functions: the only marked difference of function being that which accompanies difference of sex. Every man is warrior, hunter, fisherman, tool-maker, builder; every woman performs the same drudgeries. Very early, however, in the course of social evolution, there arises an incipient differentiation between the governing and the governed. ”

“ If, tracing back the evolution of things, he allows himself to entertain the hypothesis that all matter once existed in a diffused form, he finds it impossible to conceive how this came to be so; and equally, if he speculates on the future, he can assign no limit to the grand succession of phenomena ever unfolding themselves before him. Similarly, if he looks inward, he perceives that both terminations of the thread of consciousness are beyond his grasp: he cannot remember when or how consciousness commenced, and he cannot examine the consciousness at any moment existing ”

“ Thus, on contemplating the various grades of organisms in their ascending order, we find them more and more distinguished from their inanimate media in structure, in form, in chemical composition, in specific gravity, in temperature, in self-mobility. It is true that this generalization does not hold with regularity. Organisms which are in some respects the most strongly contrasted with the inorganic world, are in other respects less contrasted than inferior organisms. As a class, mammals are higher than birds; and yet they are of lower temperature, and have smaller powers of locomotion. ”

“ Each great centre of production, each manufacturing town or district, continues always in the same place; and many of the firms in such town or district, are for generations carried on either by the descendants or successors of those who founded them. Just as in a living body, the cells that make up some important organ severally perform their functions for a time and then disappear, leaving others to supply their places; so, in each part of a society the organ remains, though the persons who compose it change. ”

“ Understood in its entirety, the law is that each plant or animal produces others of like kind with itself: the likeness of kind consisting not so much in the repetition of individual traits as in the assumption of the same general structure. This truth has been made by daily illustration so familiar as nearly to have lost its significance. That wheat produces wheat,—that existing oxen are descended from ancestral oxen,—that every unfolding organism ultimately takes the form of the class, order, genus, and species from which it sprang ”

“ Martineau regards the human intellect as capable, and I as incapable. This contrast does not appear to me of the kind which his Essay tacitly asserts. If there is such a thing as the "pride of Science," it is obviously exceeded by the pride of Theology. I fail to perceive humility in the belief that the human mind is able to comprehend that which is behind appearances; and I do not see how piety is especially [388] exemplified in the assertion that the Universe contains no mode of existence higher in Nature than that which is present to us in consciousness. ”

“ Approbation and reprobation, divine and human, come to be associated in thought with the sympathetic and unsympathetic actions respectively. The commands of the creed, the legal penalties, and the code of social conduct, unitedly enforce them; and every child as it grows up, daily has impressed on it by the words and faces and voices of those around the authority of these highest principles of conduct. And now we may see why there arises a belief in the special sacredness of these highest principles, and a sense of the supreme authority of the altruistic sentiments answering to them. ”

“ By steps so small, that year after year the industrial arrangements have seemed just what they were before—by changes as insensible as those through which a seed passes into a tree; society has become the complex body of mutually-dependent workers which we now see. And this economic organization, mark, is the all-essential organization. Through the combination thus spontaneously evolved, every citizen is supplied with daily necessaries; while he yields some product or aid to others. That we are severally alive to-day, we owe to the regular working of this combination during the past week ”

“ This multiplication of effects, which is displayed in every event of to-day, has been going on from the beginning; and is true of the grandest phenomena of the universe as of the most insignificant. From the law that every active force produces more than one change, it is an inevitable corollary that during the past there has been an ever-growing complication of things. Throughout creation there must have gone on, and must still go on, a never-ceasing transformation of the homogeneous into the heterogeneous. ”

“ The reader of popular science thinks the modes of reproduction still more various. He learns that whole tribes of creatures multiply by gemmation—by a development from the body of the parent of buds which, after unfolding into the parental form, separate and lead independent lives. Concerning microscopic forms of both animal and vegetal life, he reads that the ordinary mode of multiplication is by spontaneous fission—a splitting up of the original individual into two or more individuals, which by and by severally repeat the process. ”

“ Thus, between our existing Earth, the phenomena of whose crust neither geographers, geologists, mineralogists, nor meteorologists have yet enumerated, and the molten globe out of which it was evolved, the contrast in heterogeneity is extreme.
When from the Earth itself we turn to the plants and animals which have lived, or still live, upon its surface, we find ourselves in some difficulty from lack of facts. That every existing organism has been developed out of the simple into the complex, is indeed the first established truth of all ”