Evolutionary philosophy

“ But, leaving special genesis aside, let us consider a little more closely the doctrine of natural selection. This, in fact, is not a theory of the origin—of the genesis of species. As M. Quatrefages has remarked, it is not a theory at all, for it explains nothing, accounts for nothing, and is not therefore truly an hypothesis in philosophy. Natural selection is not a cause, but the discussion of it draws attention to the chain of causes at the bottom of which we must look for the solution of our problem. ”

“ To any one who studies the signs of the times, the emergence of the philosophy of Evolution, in the attitude of claimant to the throne of the world of thought, from the limbo of hated and, as many hoped, forgotten things, is the most portentous event of the nineteenth century. But the most effective weapons of the modern champions of Evolution were fabricated by Darwin; and the 'Origin of Species' has enlisted a formidable body of combatants, trained in the severe school of Physical Science, whose ears might have long remained deaf to the speculations of a priori philosophers. ”

“ But evolutionary theories, especially as they rise towards comprehensiveness, cannot permanently content themselves with origins, or with classifications merely, nor with concentrating on nature rather than on man. ”

“ The evolution theory could only pass beyond the rank of a hypothesis, if we should succeed in showing the impelling forces of such an origin of species through development. Such an attempt can be made in two ways—the metaphysical and the scientific-empirical. ”

“ Darwin, conscious of the axiomatic truth that no more can be evolved than there is involved, teaches the doctrine that variation or change of species is brought about by causes which already existed in the common progenitor. Such being true, we ask: In what link below man, in the great evolutionary chain, is intellect and moral nature to be found? Sensible men are turning, however, away from the old, threadbare, worn-out guess-work. ”

“ Everything, however, which is evolutionary aims to produce the utmost possible, in the next stage, out of the antecedents which lie in the last stage. Evolutionary methods, therefore, have nothing to do with ideals; they aim always at the best possible under the circumstances. ”

“ And it is time to remember that biology is neither the only science, nor yet the model to which all other sciences must adapt themselves. Evolutionism, as I shall try to show, is not a truly scientific philosophy, either in its method or in the problems which it considers. The true scientific philosophy is something more arduous and more aloof, appealing to less mundane hopes, and requiring a severer discipline for its successful practice. ”

“ At the same time it must be steadily remembered that there are many naturalists at the present day, especially among those of the lower order of intelligence, who, while accepting evolutionism in a general way, and therefore always describing themselves as Darwinians, do not believe, and often cannot even understand, the distinctive Darwinian addition to the evolutionary doctrine—namely, the principle of natural selection. ”

“ The public at large were induced by its ephemeral vogue to interest themselves in a question to which they had never previously given even a passing thought, though more practised biologists of evolutionary tendencies were grieved at heart that evolution should first have been popularly presented to the English world under so unscientific, garbled, and mutilated a form. ”

“ If we found the imaginary link in question, he would not be a monkey, nor yet in any way a tailed man. And so forth generally through the whole list of popular beliefs and current fallacies as to the real meaning of evolutionary teaching. Whatever most people think evolutionary is for the most part a pure parody of the evolutionist's opinion. ”

“ Ideas do not need to be embodied before selection can act upon them; thus an increasing amount of evolutionary change will take place through the natural selection of ideas than through the older and far more wasteful process, natural selection of individuals and species. ”

“ In the evolutionary theories of modern biology, it is precisely the problems of the origination of new species, and of the special character of the relations between the species and its environment by which this process is conditioned, that have attracted almost exclusive attention. And, with the steadily increasing success of evolutionary hypotheses in dealing with biological problems, there has naturally arisen a tendency to extend the application of the general concept of evolution far beyond the sphere in which it first originated. ”

“ Evolutionism, as now commonly understood, may be fairly regarded as a mode of envisaging to ourselves the history of the universe, a tendency or frame of mind, a temperament, one might almost say, or habit of thought rather than a definite creed or body of dogmas. The evolutionist looks out upon the cosmos as a continuous process unfolding itself in regular order in obedience to definite natural laws. ”

“ Once more, then, the significance of evolutionary ideas, if they are to be more than a purely conventional scheme devised for the furtherance of our own practical purposes, and as an artificial aid to classification, is bound up with the doctrine that the events of the physical 272order are really the expression of the subjective interests of sentient subjects of experience. ”

“ Henceforth, in short, the dominant aspect of evolution was to be not the genesis of species, but the progress of Civilization.
31As we thoroughly grasp the meaning of all this, we see that upon the Darwinian theory it is impossible that any creature zoologically distinct from Man and superior to him should ever at any future time exist upon the earth. ”

“ Like theoretical science, Practical Philosophy and Pedagogy will no longer derive their most important principles from so-called revelations, but from the scientific truths of Evolution. This victory of Monism over Dualism opens to us a most hopeful prospect of an unending continuation of our moral, as of our intellectual evolution. In this sense, we welcome the Theory of Evolution in its present form newly stated by Darwin, as a challenge—the most important challenge of pure and applied science. ”

“ But one difficulty with the evolution theory as the sole method by which the past or present inhabitants of the world have come into existence is that, so far as we can judge, it has done and completed its work just as effectually and finally as special creation appears to have terminated in certain forms, some of which are extinct and some of which are living. Take the Darwinian pedigree of man, as stated in a former chapter, or any other mode of tracing the supposed stages of animal evolution. ”

“ If we give the rein to our imaginations, and, taking the process of evolution as it is described to us, suppose that in the long course of countless ages the struggle for existence among very numerous individuals has led to gradual transformations of structure which the sexual selection has transmitted to offspring, and so a new animal has at length been formed through the successive "survivals of the fittest," we reach an animal of a new species, and that species, under no circumstances, produces any type but its own, so far as we have any means of knowledge. ”

“ Thus we get at least the possibility of a true “objective” basis for distinction between the directions of evolutionary progress. But we must remember that it is only where we are able to know something of the actual interests of finite experiencing beings that we have safe grounds for judging whether those interests receive more adequate embodiment in consequence of the changes of structure and habit produced by evolution or not. ”

“ And with respect to that theory of the origin of the forms of life peopling our globe, with which Darwin's name is bound up as closely as that of Newton with the theory of gravitation, nothing seems to be further from the mind of the present generation than any attempt to smother it with ridicule or to crush it by vehemence of denunciation. "The struggle for existence," and "Natural selection," have become household words and every-day conceptions. ”

“ So far as biology is concerned, the publication of the 'Origin of Species,' for the first time, put the doctrine of evolution, in its application to living things, upon a sound scientific foundation. It became an instrument of investigation, and in no hands did it prove more brilliantly profitable than in those of Darwin himself. ”

“ An important theoretical consideration has also shaken our faith in the correctness of the evolutionary theory as a whole. It is one of the essential traits of this theory that, in general, civilization has developed from simple forms to complex forms, and that extended fields of human culture have developed under more or less rationalistic impulses. ”

“ Darwins philosophy may be, or whether he has any, is a matter of no consequence at all, compared with the important questions, whether a theory to account for the origination and diversification of animal and vegetable forms through the operation of secondary causes does or does not exclude design; and whether the establishment by adequate evidence of Darwin s particular theory of diversification through variation and natural selection would essentially alter the present scientific and philosophical grounds for theistic views of Nature. ”

“ Now that the general evolutionary thesis is fully and freely accepted by those who carry on such researches, more stress is laid on the differentiation of the stages of evolutionary advance than on the fact of their underlying community of nature. The conceptual intelligence which is especially characteristic of the higher mental procedure of man is more firmly distinguished from the perceptual intelligence which he shares with the lower animals—distinguished now as a higher product of evolution, no longer as differing in origin or different in kind. ”

“ Why, if man can by patience select variations most useful to himself, should nature fail in selecting variations useful, under changing conditions of life, to her living products? What limit can be put to this power, acting during long ages and rigidly scrutinising the whole constitution, structure, and habits of each creature,—favouring the good and rejecting the bad? I can see no limit to this power, in slowly and beautifully adapting each form to the most complex relations of life. The theory of natural selection, even if we looked no further than this, seems to me to be in itself probable. ”

“ But we must contest the claim that the wonderful eye of man and animals could have been formed by evolution. Darwin’s whole theory aims to account for all creation, with its super-abundant evidences of design, by natural selection, which works without design and without intelligence. The theory is founded upon the monstrous assumption that unintelligent animals and plants, can, by aimless effort arrive at such perfection as the organs of the human body, exceeding anything in mechanical contrivance, invented to date by the genius of man. ”

“ Of all the mischievous misconceptions of Darwin’s theory none have worked so much harm as that which regards natural selection as the active and efficient cause of evolution. Although evolution is an established fact, our knowledge of its processes are incomplete and must always remain so until we have solved that most vexed of all biological problems, the “causes of variation.” ”

“ Darwin taught that, “The lower impulses of vegetable life pass, by insensible gradations, into the instinct of animals and the higher intelligence of man,” without purpose or design. None of these three hypotheses can admit the creation of man.
4. Other evolutionists, believing in the evolution of both plants and animals, nevertheless refuse to believe in the evolution of man—the most baneful application of the whole theory. Even if there were convincing proof of the evolution of plants and animals from one germ, there is no real proof of the evolution of man. ”

“ That many and serious objections may be advanced against the theory of descent with modification through variation and natural selection, I do not deny. I have endeavoured to give to them their full force. Nothing at first can appear more difficult to believe than that the more complex organs and instincts have been perfected, not by means superior to, though analogous with, human reason, but by the accumulation of innumerable slight variations, each good for the individual possessor. ”

“ If the theory that the different species of animals now known to us have been evolved successively by descent from some primordial simplest form through modifications induced by change of habitation, of medium of life, and accumulation of new structures occurring through an immense period of time, be a sound hypothesis, the process which has evolved superior out of inferior organizations ought, in consistency with itself and with all its supposed conditions, to be capable of being reversed, so as to lead to the evolution of inferior out of superior organisms. ”

“ Darwinism by its own confession knows nothing of Origins, not even of the Origin of Species itself. There must be life already existing before Natural Selection has anything to select; there must be eyes and honey-cells of some kind, before they can be improved; there must be Species, before one can be transformed into another. Is it not evident, however, that the cause—of whatever kind it may be—which brought any of these into being, must have something,—not to say everything,—to do with the capacities and potentialities by which its future history is conditioned? ”

“ Following the safe example of the physicists, and acknowledging the fact of the diversification of a once homogeneous species into varieties, we may receive the theory of the evolution of these into species, even while for the present we hold the hypothesis of a further evolution in cool suspense or in grave suspicion. In respect to very many questions a wise man's mind rests long in a state neither of belief nor unbelief. ”