William Stanley Jevons

“ So far as we can see, then, infinitely diverse living creatures might have been created consistently with the theory of evolution, and the precise reason why we have a backbone, two hands with opposable thumbs, an erect stature, a complex brain, two hundred and twenty-three bones, and many other peculiarities, is only to be found in the original act of creation. I do not, any less than Paley, believe that the eye of man manifests design. ”

“ There is no great blame to them. Who, indeed, could see in the rude tram-line of Benjamin Outram the germ which was to grow into the maze of lines, and points, and signals which we now pass through without surprise at Clapham Junction or at London Bridge? That most complex organization, a great railway station, is entirely a product of frequent experiment. ”

“ Of course, the saying at once suggests the question, What is an experiment? In a certain way, all people, whether fools or wise men, are constantly making experiments. The education of the infant is thoroughly experimental from the very first, only in a haphazard and unconscious way. The child which overbalances itself in learning to walk is experimenting on the law of gravity. All successful action is successful experiment, in the broadest sense of the term, and every mistake or failure is a negative experiment, which deters us from repetition. ”

“ Every railway accident which happens is an experiment revealing some fault of design, some insufficiency in the materials, some contingency unprovided for. The accident is inquired into, and then the engineers set to work to plan improvements which shall prevent the like accident from happening in the future. If we had time to trace the history of the steam-engine, of gas-lighting, of electric telegraphs, of submarine cables, of electric lighting, or of any other great improvement, we should see, in like manner, that the wisdom of Parliament has had nothing to do with planning it. ”

“ The part of wisdom is to learn to foresee the results of our actions, by making slight and harmless trials before we commit ourselves to an irrevocable line of conduct. We ought to feel our way, and try the ice before we venture on it to a dangerous extent. To make an experiment, in this more proper sense, is to arrange certain known conditions, or, in other words, to put together certain causal agents, in order to ascertain their aggregate outcome or effect. The experiment has knowledge alone for its immediate purpose. ”

“ Parliament can not say simply "as you-were," and proceed to a new and more hopeful experiment. A social humpty-dumpty can not be set up again just as it was before even by the Queen's men. The vested interests created are usually too formidable to be put aside, and too expensive to be bought up. A good many years, say seven, or ten at the least, are needed to develop properly any important legislative experiment, so that the same generation of statesmen would not have more than three or four opportunities of experiment in the same subject during the longest political career. ”

“ If we divide up the country, and try one experiment on one town or county, and another on another, there is a possibility of making an almost unlimited number of valid trials within ten or twenty years. But, apart from this consideration, a general legislative change is not a true experiment at all, because it affords no clear means of distinguishing its effects from the general resultant of social and industrial progress. ”

“ Now, every man who establishes a shop or factory or social institution of a novel kind is trying an experiment. If he hits an unsupplied need of his fellow men, the experiment succeeds; that is, it has something succeeding or following it, namely, repetition by himself and others. The word "success" is a most happy one etymologically. To have success is to have a future—a future of imitators.
It is quite apparent that all the great novelties of recent times have been worked out in this tentative way. How, for instance, has our vast and marvelous railway system been developed? ”

“ Suppose that Darwin is correct in saying that man is descended from the Ascidians; yet the precise form of the human body must have been influenced by an infinite train of circumstances affecting the reproduction, growth, and health, of the whole chain of intermediate beings. No doubt, the circumstances being what they were, man could not be otherwise than he is; and, if, in any other part of the universe an exactly similar earth, furnished with exactly similar germs of life, existed, a race must have grown up there exactly similar to the human race. ”

“ Perhaps it may be said that every new law is necessarily an experiment, and affords experience for its own improvement, and, if necessary, its abrogation. But there are two strong reasons why an act which has been made general, and has come into general operation, can seldom serve as an experiment. Of course, a great many acts of Parliament are experimentally found to be mistaken, for they never come into considerable operation at all, like the acts to promote registration of titles, not to mention the Agricultural Holdings Act. ”

“ If God has chosen that any part of the process shall be without distinct and special creative acts, there is no reason why the whole process may not be, and the continuous chain of evolution run back to the one original creative act. It must be remembered, however, that the argument proceeds all the time upon the supposition of an incessant and ubiquitous exercise of the will and the agency of a personal God, in every atom of matter, or every force-centre, and thus underlying and pervading the whole phenomenal universe. ”

“ Would Parliament ever think of defining by act of Parliament when and how people shall meet to amuse themselves, and what they shall do, and when they shall have had enough of it? Must not people find out by trial what pleases and what does not? The late Mr. Sergeant Cox is said to have invented penny readings for the people, and they answered so well under his management that they were imitated in all parts of the kingdom, and eventually in many other parts of the world. ”

“ Not only is social experimentation a possible thing, but it is in every part of the kingdom, excepting the palace of St. Stephen's, the commonest thing possible, the universal mode of social progress. It would hardly be too much to say that social progress is social experimentation, and social experimentation is social progress. Changes effected by any important act of Parliament are like storms, earthquakes, and cataclysms, which disturb the continuous course of social growth. ”

“ It may, perhaps, be objected that these are matters of physical science and practical engineering, in which the supremacy of experiment has long been recognized. That is not wholly so; for the success of a system, like that of the railways or tramways, depends much upon social considerations. However that may be, there is no difficulty in showing that the same principles apply to the most purely social institutions. If anything, it is the social side of an enterprise which is usually most doubtful, and most in need of experiment when it can be applied. ”

“ It is difficult to discover that, as regards courage, our soldiers in Afghanistan and Zoolooland are any better than the men whose countries they invade. But it is the science of the rifle, the shell, and the mountain-gun—science perfected by constant experimentation—which gives the poor savage no chance of successful resistance. ”

“ Any one acquainted with the bright little Swedish seaport, and the orderly, polished lower-class population of Sweden, will be in no hurry to draw analogies between their condition and that of our great, busy, turbulent Anglo-Irish towns. At any rate it is obvious that experiments ought to be made upon the most closely proximate cases which can be found, and, if three or four such towns as Birmingham, Bristol, Bolton, and Newcastle-upon-Tyne could be induced to try the Gothenburg scheme, it would be an ample first experiment. ”

“ Darwin's books, admirable though they all are, consists but in the setting forth of a multitude of indeterminate problems. He proves in the most beautiful manner, that each flower of an orchid is adapted to some insect which frequents and fertilizes it, and these adaptations are but a few cases of those immensely numerous ones which have occurred throughout the life of plants and animals. ”

“ We must postulate absolute being, he says, as the condition of any conclusions as to phenomena. The evolutionist holds, however, that every thing in regard to absolute being is unknowable. If it is unknowable, then he can no more deny than affirm any thing in regard to it. Dr. Smith then said, that since the evolutionist, on his own principles, could not deny it, he should suppose, for the present, reserving the evidence for it until later in the discussion, that absolute being is personal being, with reason, affection, and will. ”

“ But an unfortunate confusion of ideas exists, and it seems to be supposed that, because for reasons of obvious convenience the civil and criminal laws are as a general rule made uniform for the whole kingdom, therefore the legislative action of Parliament must always be uniform and definitive. When an important change is advocated, for instance, in the licensing laws, Parliament collects abundant information, which is usually inconclusive, and then proceeds to effect all over the kingdom some very costly and irrevocable change—a change which generally disappoints its own advocates. ”

“ We find certain laws in Nature (which is only another name for methods of divine agency) , by which this process of evolution is carried on. Such are the laws of the persistence of force, the continuity of motion, and the indestructibility of matter. The divine power, working according to these laws, builds up the system of the universe. Dr. Smith showed how, on the theory of evolution, the apparent chasm between inorganic and organic Nature might be passed over without disturbance or any different or peculiar divine agency. ”

“ Therefore I hold unhesitatingly that, whenever it is possible, legislation should observe the order of nature and proceed tentatively.
Social progress, I have said, is social experimentation. Every new heading that is inserted in the London Trades' Directory is claimed by those private individuals who have tried a new trade and found it to answer. The struggle for existence makes us all look out for chances of profit. We are all perhaps in some degree inventors, but some are more bold and successful. ”

“ If the original life-germ of each creature is a simple particle of protoplasm, unendowed with any distinctive forces, then the whole of the complex phenomena of animal and vegetable life are effects without causes. Protoplasm may be chemically the same substance, and the germ-cell of a man and of a fish may be apparently the same, so far as the microscope can decide; but if certain cells produce men, and others as uniformly produce a given species of fish, there must be a hidden constitution determining the extremely different results. ”

“ Granting all this, I cannot for a moment admit that the theory of Evolution will alter our theological views. That theory embraces several laws, or uniformities, which are observed to be true in the production of living forms ”

“ It is hardly too much to say that the licensing laws are laws to give a license to the publicans and grocers to do what they like to extend the sale of spirituous liquors.
Although the liquor-traffic presents the widest and most important sphere for social experiment, there are many other matters to which it must be applied. Consideration in detail must show whether, in each case, the tentative method is or is not the proper method. But it is easy to name several other reforms which ought, in all probability, to be approached in the experimental manner. ”

“ Not only is the smaller experiment, in a logical point of view, far better than the larger one, but it is possible to try many concurrent small experiments upon a farm of moderate extent.
I maintain that, if our legislators are to act rationally, they will as far as possible imitate the agricultural chemist. The idea, for instance, of obliging, or even allowing, all the boroughs in the kingdom simultaneously to adopt the Gothenburg plan, would be ridiculous and irrational. The cost and confusion which would arise from a sudden general trial must be very great ”

“ No doubt, by aid of an elaborate machinery of administration and a powerful body of police, Government can, to a certain extent, guide, or at any rate restrain, the conduct of its subjects. Even in this respect its powers are very limited, and a law which does not command the consent of the body of the people must soon be repealed or become inoperative. ”

“ Smith commenced by saying that while he was very far from being an advocate for the theory of evolution, it was no part of his purpose to attempt its refutation. He expressed the opinion, judging from former conflicts between religious and scientific theories, and the evident tendency of scientific investigation and discovery, that not many years would pass away before some theory of evolution would be generally accepted by educated men as the most rational explanation of the phenomena of the universe. ”

“ It need hardly be said that it is to frequent and carefully planned appeals to experiment in the physical sciences that we owe almost all the progress of the human race in the last three centuries. Even moral and intellectual triumphs might often be traced back to dependence on physical inventions, and to the incentive which they give to general activity. ”

“ Thus, the total numbers receiving poor-law relief, or the numbers apprehended in the kingdom for drunkenness, are numerical results affected by the oscillations of trade, by the character of the seasons, the value of gold, etc., etc., as well as by the acts of the Legislature. To make a valid experiment we must have a certain thing subject to certain constant conditions, and we must introduce a single definite change of condition, which will then be probably the cause of whatever phenomenon follows. ”