John Cook Wilson

“ In ordinary life, when we are not philosophising we have a great contempt for beliefs which are merely the result of imperfect mental development; we expect them among savage tribes, the prejudiced, and the uneducated.
An attempt has been made to remove a bias in favour of the evolution theory. If the attempt were successful, it must be admitted that it would create a bias against the theory: and there is all the more reason to try to take a purely scientific attitude, and ask whether we have to believe whether we like it or not. ”

“ Hence either they have not the highest rank, which involves the absurdity that the criterion of cognitions of the highest rank is shown to be a valid criterion by appealing to cognitions which are not of the highest rank: or else the principles of biology have the highest rank, and then it turns out that there are some absolute truths which are not derived from the criterion, and, what is still worse, that evolution has altogether forgotten to explain their origin, thus leaving the old problem so far from being solved that it is not even attempted. ”

“ To vindicate this position the evolutionist must know the latter proposition to be true. But if he does he has a higher knowledge than the criterion itself, because it is knowledge from which the criterion derives its value, and thus the criterion is not the ultimate criterion for him. The evolutionist has fallen into this contradiction apparently because he, has forgotten that he himself is one of the last terms of the series. ”

“ The evolutionist philosopher probably believes that it is a beneficent result of the great law of Evolution; and there may be scientific evolutionists who feel at least a prejudice in its favour.
But let us look a little nearer to see whether we should have cause to congratulate ourselves if the evolutionist philosopher were right.
The theory that the mind has become modified by its environment, and that its functions have become fixed, implies that at first it was not modified and its functions not thus fixed. ”

“ I begin with an objection, relating to a matter already referred to, which perhaps concerns the form of the theory rather than its essence. The evolutionist does not seem sufficiently to notice that, while seeming to make inconceivability an ultimate test or criterion, he is really throwing entire discredit on the mind's power to conceive or not conceive as such.
Men do indeed believe firmly when they think the contradictory of their belief inconceivable ”

“ We cannot think otherwise because, during that adjustment between the organism and the environment which evolution has established, the inner relations have been so moulded upon the outer relations that they cannot by any effort be made not to fit them. ”

“ For instance, generation after generation of a particular race had never seen swans which were not white. Countless generations living in certain parts of the earth have never seen water in a solid form.
Thus from the very manner of its formation our belief that the arc must be greater than its chord is compatible with the existence of arcs which are not greater than their chords. There are ways enough in which our limitation to one kind of arc may have come about. For instance, naturalists expect to find new forms of flora and fauna in regions which are being explored for the first time. ”

“ I do not forget others distinguished in mathematics, classics, or philosophy, to whom I am indebted for instruction, but I do not name them, for I am thankful to say they are still alive.
Whatever a man's own unworthiness may be, he is allowed to praise his teachers. ”

“ Can a belief be even intelligent which is simply caused by the want of a power to think otherwise, a power which might have been developed, and is lost to us by a process as unconscious as that which deprives us of taste or smell when we have a cold? ”

“ In its early experiences the mind was not obliged to think the arc greater than its chord. But every arc presented to the experience of every generation has been greater than its chord: and the constant perception of this relation gradually modified the perceiving and thinking organs, so that it became more and more difficult to think arc and chord in any other relation. The difficulty transmitted by inheritance became stronger by accumulation in successive generations, till it became altogether impossible to think the contradictory of the axiom. ”

“ This may be shortly put by saying that the evolutionist philosopher has cut himself off from the possibility of giving the necessary evidence in favour of his own theory.
But it may be answered that though satisfactory evidence for the theory cannot be given, it is a possible hypothesis, and though it may have to surrender all claims to establish the validity of our beliefs, it may be true, for constant experience might produce such an effect on our organism. ”

“ The same process has woven a falsehood into our nervous tissues and so into our minds: for the confidence we have in axioms is made to come from our conviction that their contradictories are not even thinkable, and yet it is shewn at the same time that this is an utter mistake, inasmuch as thought in itself, though not as developed in us, is capable of thinking these contradictories. The individual then at best has got a true belief at the expense of entertaining a false belief, and at the expense of the loss of half his mental powers. ”

“ We are like the Proteus which in dark caves has gradually lost the eyes which would be useless to it: except that we are worse off, for though an object for our lost faculties may never come into our experience, we should obviously have plenty of employment for them. ”

“ But there is one short general criticism which seems enough, and would have explained beforehand without such an examination of details that the evolutionist theory must end in self-contradiction.
There is an elementary principle on which we should expect all philosophies to agree, which is that thought cannot question the validity of its own presuppositions or even try to establish them without self-contradiction. ”

“ The mistake is of the more elementary character when the attempt to establish the laws of thought, or a general criterion, is made by help of the reasonings of a special science, for that of course must presuppose the general laws and the criterion. ”

“ In fact, in respect of all that is axiomatic, that is, of all that appears self-evident, the whole human race is in the position of that part of it which has lost or never had the use of a particular sense—the deaf, the blind, or the colour-blind, or those who have no ear for music. ”

“ The inconceivableness of the contradictory of an axiom has been produced, it is said, by a constant experience in the race, which again corresponds to a universal truth without exception. How does the evolutionist know that the experience of the race has been such, for he cannot have had it ”

“ If 'Just as it has become impossible for the hand to grasp by bending the fingers outwards instead of inwards; so has it become impossible for those nervous actions by which we apprehend primary space-relations to be reversed so as to enable us to think of these relations otherwise than we do,' then it follows that once it was possible that these nervous actions should be reversed. ”

“ The induction has registered its conclusion automatically in the physical organism, and, through that, in the mind. The race has come to believe that all A must be B, because the constant experience through its history of instances of A which were B has so modified the organs that they cannot be used for thinking A except as B.
It has been inadvertently assumed that in axioms such a belief has been produced in one way only. ”

“ Arcs may have been seen equal to or less than their chords, but if they only came seldom, or if in the course of time their number much diminished, like that of an expiring race of animals, then according to the biological principles presupposed, the infinitely greater accumulation of contrary experiences would in time wipe away all trace of them from our organism. ”

“ It will follow that our minds have been deprived of half their powers beyond recovery. The geometrician, for instance, is cut off from a field of thought as large as the present science—a field in which among many other things he would have developed the properties of those straight lines which are not the shortest distance between any two points upon themselves. ”

“ It is easy to see that the maximum logical worth of the test would be that of an induction drawn from all the instances which have occurred in the experience of the race, supposing these could be presented to one mind which would draw the inference. ”

“ This continues to hold however much the arc is flattened: so long as it has any perceptible curvature at all, it is felt to be longer than the chord uniting its extremes. Parallel experiences are derived from the ocular muscles. Carrying the eye along the line of the curve, yields to consciousness a greater quantity of sensation than carrying the eye along the chord does. ”

“ It means that the mind and its organs were so constituted that they were capable of thinking the contradictory of axioms, for instance of conceiving a chord equal to or greater than its arc, or two straight lines which enclosed a space, only that this capacity was never developed. ”