LECTURE VI-PART I

ZOOLOGY, AND THE PHILOSOPHY OF EVOLUTION

THE facts given in the last two lectures seem to show that we cannot expect much from the " Lamarckian factors," even if they should prove to be factors; and while this impression may be wrong, it seems to be the rational frame of mind until it has proved wrong.

He who follows the current literature of zoology finds that many writers assure him, in effect, that the years which Darwin and Wallace gave to hard labor on the problem of species were thrown away, since all they tried to find out by hard work might have been deduced from the Philosophy of Evolution.

We were warned, long ago, that "whoever, unable to doubt and eager to affirm, shall establish principles, and, according to the unmoved truth of these, shall reject or receive others, he shall exchange things for words, reason for insanity, the world for a fable, and shall be incapable of interpreting."

In "philosophy" current history is sometimes ancient history, and the ardent disciples of "philosophers" who, in modest earnestness, undertake to formulate the scientific knowledge of their day, often become bolder than their teachers, and, growing arrogant and reckless with success, find at last that they have sold their birthright in nature for what proves, when examined, to be no better than a mess of pottage.

The evidence that living matter is continuous, from beginning to end, is so conclusive that it convinces all who know its value. All living things are one by birth, and the system of living nature is, historically, a unit, a consistent whole; not a collection of isolated and independent species. How does it happen, then, that at every point in its history, we find it divided into detached groups, sep

arated by gaps, and characterized by fitness? Why is the system of living nature such that we cannot picture it as a circle, spreading in all directions from a common centre, and growing wider around its whole circumference? Why is it such that it is more exactly represented by a number of growing radii, independent at their outer ends?

This is the problem which Darwin undertook to solve, by showing that it results from extermination according to a standard of fitness. How does the Lamarckian meet it? Sometimes by denying the existence of fitness. Sometimes by asserting, even in the same breath, that fitness is universal and necessary, and that there is no real problem.

He asserts that it is the outcome or expression of a deeper principle of necessary progress or evolution, which must result in fitness. The tendency to regard natural selection as more or less. unnecessary and superfluous, which is so characteristic of our day, seems to grow out of reverence for the all-sufficiency of the philosophy of evolution, and pious belief that the history of living things flows out of this philosophy as a necessary truth or axiom.

"The inheritance of characters acquired during the life of the individual is an indispensable axiom of the monistic doctrine of evolution." 1

The writer yields to no one in admiration of the doctrine of evolution. So far as it is a scientific generalization from our knowledge of nature, it is one of the greatest triumphs of the human. mind; rivalled only by its reciprocal, the doctrine of dissolution.

Experience seems to show, very clearly, that our system of nature is, on the whole, moving towards what commends itself to our minds as evolution, or progress to greater and greater perfection. While there is just as much evidence that each step in evolution is also a step toward dissolution, we have the same rational ground for expecting that this movement will continue, without any sudden radical change, that we have for other expectations which we base on knowledge of nature.

So far as the doctrine of evolution is based on knowledge, it is not only a part, but one of the most valuable and suggestive parts

1 Haeckel," Monism," p. 96.

of the system of science, for the scientific law of evolution is part of science; but the philosophy of evolution is held by many as a creed, superior to and able to direct science. As men of science, we, like Huxley, have "nothing to say to any philosophy of evolution," except so far as it stands in the way of scientific progress.

We are sometimes told that while the other idols of which Bacon warned us are still worshipped, the idols of the theatre have been deserted, and their temples abandoned; although he himself lays peculiar stress on their persistency.

"Lastly, there are idols which have crept into men's minds from the various dogmas of particular systems of philosophy, . and these we denominate idols of the theatre. For we regard all the systems of philosophy hitherto received or imagined as so many plays brought out and performed, creating fictitious and theatrical worlds. Nor do we speak only of the present systems, or of the philosophy and sects of the ancients, since numerous other plays of a similar nature can still be composed."

They who worship this modern idol of the theatre hold that everything which has taken place and everything which can take place in our universe is deducible from the primal distribution of matter and energy. They tell us that everything in the past and everything in the future follows, of necessity, from this startingpoint, inasmuch as it might all have been predicted; but while science knows laws, -laws of evolution and others, it knows no necessity except the logical necessity for stopping when evidence stops.

The evolutionist tells us that if we start with a homogeneous universe, with all the matter uniformly distributed, and all the energy kinetic; and if any break in this indefinite unstable homogeneity exist or be brought about, all the rest must follow of necessity, as a matter of course, from the nature of things; that all things must go on along their predetermined course until all the matter shall have fallen into stable equilibrium, and all the energy shall have become latent or potential.

As no one can say the basis for all this is not true, and as it seems much more consistent with scientific knowledge than other systems of philosophy, we must admit that, for all we know

to the contrary, it may be true; and we must ask whether, if true, it is any substitute for science; although we must remember that there is no end to the things which, while no one treats them seriously, may nevertheless be true.

All the fancies of the poets, which do not involve a contradiction, may be true; but while anything which is not absurd may be good poetry, science is founded on the rock of evidence.

Many have found the opinion that all nature is conscious and endowed with volition, that the morning stars sing together, that the waters laugh, that trees talk, and that the wind bloweth where it listeth, worthy of belief; and it is clear that we cannot oppose any belief of this sort by evidence, or convert the sailor who believes that the wind obeys his whistle, by asking for proof.

The path of scientific progress is strewn with beliefs which have been abandoned for lack of evidence, as burst shells strew a battlefield, and it is our boast that they are abandoned, and not lugged along the line of march. As a shell which has failed to burst is, now and then, picked up on some old battlefield, by some one on whom experience is thrown away, and is exploded by him in the bosom of his approving family, with disastrous results, so one of these abandoned beliefs may be dug up by the head of some intellectual family, to the confusion of those who follow him as their leader.

So far as the philosophy of evolution involves belief that nature is determinate, or due to a necessary law of universal progress or evolution, it seems to me to be utterly unsupported by evidence, and totally unscientific.

This system of philosophy teaches that, for purposes of illustration, our universe may be compared to an unstable, homogeneous, saturated solution; which remains unchanged so long as it is undisturbed, but crystallizes when shaken. The process of evolution must be supposed to start with a disturbance or shock. Something, inherent in the nature of things or outside, must press the button; but matter and its properties do all the rest, just as crystallization follows from the properties of the solution. Even if all this is granted, it is not apparent that the mind of the

evolutionist has any power by the aid of which it could deduce anything whatever from homogeneity, even if it were present at the beginning.

There are homogeneous solutions of sugar and homogeneous solutions of brine, and no one without experience of similar facts has any way to tell what potencies are latent in a solution except by finding out. While we find no reason to suppose a homogeneous saturated solution has any power to initiate anything, we cannot think of it as inert. It is, as it were, alive with energy, and its inactivity is due to the exact balancing of all its powers. It is prepared to spring into energetic action the instant the bonds that chain it are broken by something that disturbs the balance and sets its forces free.

So, too, the primeval homogeneity of the evolutionist is imagined as instinct with world-producing energy, ready to evolve stars and systems and worlds and oceans and continents and living things and men, and all that is "in the round ocean, and the living air, and the blue sky, and in the mind of man," the instant it is set free; and so on to the end, which will come when all the energy has worked itself out in motion, and all the matter has found rest in stable equilibrium.

Unless he who worships this idol of the theatre is prepared to assert that there is only one kind of indefinite incoherent homogeneity; and unless he knows, in some way of which men of science are ignorant, what sort of homogeneous solution our universe was at the beginning; the only way for him to learn what potencies are latent in it is to find out by studying their products. It is hard to see how he can deduce anything whatever from his necessary law of universal progress except what he discovers. If his premises are admitted, all he can deduce from them regarding our subject is that, if he finds natural selection, the potency of natural selection was latent in his solution.

The philosophy of evolution is of no more use as a substitute for science than any other system of philosophy, although it is, no doubt, not only the latest, but the most consistent with our knowledge of nature, and although it may, for all I know to the contrary, be true. All this fails to give it any value as a short cut to natural knowledge.