Darwinism (1889) Part 36

It must be remembered we are here dealing solely with the capability of the Darwinian theory to account for the origin of the _mind_, as well as it accounts for the origin of the _body_ of man, and we must, therefore, recall the essential features of that theory. These are, the preservation of useful variations in the struggle for life; that no creature can be improved beyond its necessities for the time being; that the law acts by life and death, and by the survival of the fittest. We have to ask, therefore, what relation the successive stages of improvement of the mathematical faculty had to the life or death of its possessors; to the struggles of tribe with tribe, or nation with nation; or to the ultimate survival of one race and the extinction of another.

If it cannot possibly have had any such effects, then it cannot have been produced by natural selection.

It is evident that in the struggles of savage man with the elements and with wild beasts, or of tribe with tribe, this faculty can have had no influence. It had nothing to do with the early migrations of man, or with the conquest and extermination of weaker by more powerful peoples.

The Greeks did not successfully resist the Persian invaders by any aid from their few mathematicians, but by military training, patriotism, and self-sacrifice. The barbarous conquerors of the East, Timurlane and Gengkhis Khan, did not owe their success to any superiority of intellect or of mathematical faculty in themselves or their followers. Even if the great conquests of the Romans were, in part, due to their systematic military organisation, and to their skill in making roads and encampments, which may, perhaps, be imputed to some exercise of the mathematical faculty, that did not prevent them from being conquered in turn by barbarians, in whom it was almost entirely absent. And if we take the most civilised peoples of the ancient world--the Hindoos, the Arabs, the Greeks, and the Romans, all of whom had some amount of mathematical talent--we find that it is not these, but the descendants of the barbarians of those days--the Celts, the Teutons, and the Slavs--who have proved themselves the fittest to survive in the great struggle of races, although we cannot trace their steadily growing success during past centuries either to the possession of any exceptional mathematical faculty or to its exercise. They have indeed proved themselves, to-day, to be possessed of a marvellous endowment of the mathematical faculty; but their success at home and abroad, as colonists or as conquerors, as individuals or as nations, can in no way be traced to this faculty, since they were almost the last who devoted themselves to its exercise. We conclude, then, that the present gigantic development of the mathematical faculty is wholly unexplained by the theory of natural selection, and must be due to some altogether distinct cause.

_The Origin of the Musical and Artistic Faculties._

These distinctively human faculties follow very closely the lines of the mathematical faculty in their progressive development, and serve to enforce the same argument. Among the lower savages music, as we understand it, hardly exists, though they all delight in rude musical sounds, as of drums, tom-toms, or gongs; and they also sing in monotonous chants. Almost exactly as they advance in general intellect, and in the arts of social life, their appreciation of music appears to rise in proportion; and we find among them rude stringed instruments and whistles, till, in Java, we have regular bands of skilled performers probably the successors of Hindoo musicians of the age before the Mahometan conquest. The Egyptians are believed to have been the earliest musicians, and from them the Jews and the Greeks, no doubt, derived their knowledge of the art; but it seems to be admitted that neither the latter nor the Romans knew anything of harmony or of the essential features of modern music.[233] Till the fifteenth century little progress appears to have been made in the science or the practice of music; but since that era it has advanced with marvellous rapidity, its progress being curiously parallel with that of mathematics, inasmuch as great musical geniuses appeared suddenly among different nations, equal in their possession of this special faculty to any that have since arisen.

As with the mathematical, so with the musical faculty, it is impossible to trace any connection between its possession and survival in the struggle for existence. It seems to have arisen as a _result_ of social and intellectual advancement, not as a _cause_; and there is some evidence that it is latent in the lower races, since under European training native military bands have been formed in many parts of the world, which have been able to perform creditably the best modern music.

The artistic faculty has run a somewhat different course, though a.n.a.logous to that of the faculties already discussed. Most savages exhibit some rudiments of it, either in drawing or carving human or animal figures; but, almost without exception, these figures are rude and such as would be executed by the ordinary inartistic child. In fact, modern savages are, in this respect hardly equal to those prehistoric men who represented the mammoth and the reindeer on pieces of horn or bone. With any advance in the arts of social life, we have a corresponding advance in artistic skill and taste, rising very high in the art of j.a.pan and India, but culminating in the marvellous sculpture of the best period of Grecian history. In the Middle Ages art was chiefly manifested in ecclesiastical architecture and the illumination of ma.n.u.scripts, but from the thirteenth to the fifteenth centuries pictorial art revived in Italy and attained to a degree of perfection which has never been surpa.s.sed. This revival was followed closely by the schools of Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, France, and England, showing that the true artistic faculty belonged to no one nation, but was fairly distributed among the various European races.

These several developments of the artistic faculty, whether manifested in sculpture, painting, or architecture, are evidently outgrowths of the human intellect which have no immediate influence on the survival of individuals or of tribes, or on the success of nations in their struggles for supremacy or for existence. The glorious art of Greece did not prevent the nation from falling under the sway of the less advanced Roman; while we ourselves, among whom art was the latest to arise, have taken the lead in the colonisation of the world, thus proving our mixed race to be the fittest to survive.

_Independent Proof that the Mathematical, Musical, and Artistic Faculties have not been Developed under the Law of Natural Selection._

The law of Natural Selection or the survival of the fittest is, as its name implies, a rigid law, which acts by the life or death of the individuals submitted to its action. From its very nature it can act only on useful or hurtful characteristics, eliminating the latter and keeping up the former to a fairly general level of efficiency. Hence it necessarily follows that the characters developed by its means will be present in all the individuals of a species, and, though varying, will not vary very widely from a common standard. The amount of variation we found, in our third chapter, to be about one-fifth or one-sixth of the mean value--that is, if the mean value were taken at 100, the variations would reach from 80 to 120, or somewhat more, if very large numbers were compared. In accordance with this law we find, that all those characters in man which were certainly essential to him during his early stages of development, exist in all savages with some approach to equality. In the speed of running, in bodily strength, in skill with weapons, in acuteness of vision, or in power of following a trail, all are fairly proficient, and the differences of endowment do not probably exceed the limits of variation in animals above referred to. So, in animal instinct or intelligence, we find the same general level of development. Every wren makes a fairly good nest like its fellows; every fox has an average amount of the sagacity of its race; while all the higher birds and mammals have the necessary affections and instincts needful for the protection and bringing-up of their offspring.

But in those specially developed faculties of civilised man which we have been considering, the case is very different. They exist only in a small proportion of individuals, while the difference of capacity between these favoured individuals and the average of mankind is enormous. Taking first the mathematical faculty, probably fewer than one in a hundred really possess it, the great bulk of the population having no natural ability for the study, or feeling the slightest interest in it.[234] And if we attempt to measure the amount of variation in the faculty itself between a first-cla.s.s mathematician and the ordinary run of people who find any kind of calculation confusing and altogether devoid of interest, it is probable that the former could not be estimated at less than a hundred times the latter, and perhaps a thousand times would more nearly measure the difference between them.

The artistic faculty appears to agree pretty closely with the mathematical in its frequency. The boys and girls who, going beyond the mere conventional designs of children, draw what they _see_, not what they _know_ to be the shape of things; who naturally sketch in perspective, because it is thus they see objects; who see, and represent in their sketches, the light and shade as well as the mere outlines of objects; and who can draw recognisable sketches of every one they know, are certainly very few compared with those who are totally incapable of anything of the kind. From some inquiries I have made in schools, and from my own observation, I believe that those who are endowed with this natural artistic talent do not exceed, even if they come up to, one per cent of the whole population.

The variations in the amount of artistic faculty are certainly very great, even if we do not take the extremes. The gradations of power between the ordinary man or woman "who does not draw," and whose attempts at representing any object, animate or inanimate, would be laughable, and the average good artist who, with a few bold strokes, can produce a recognisable and even effective sketch of a landscape, a street, or an animal, are very numerous; and we can hardly measure the difference between them at less than fifty or a hundred fold.

The musical faculty is undoubtedly, in its lower forms, less uncommon than either of the preceding, but it still differs essentially from the necessary or useful faculties in that it is almost entirely wanting in one-half even of civilised men. For every person who draws, as it were instinctively, there are probably five or ten who sing or play without having been taught and from mere innate love and perception of melody and harmony.[235] On the other hand, there are probably about as many who seem absolutely deficient in musical perception, who take little pleasure in it, who cannot perceive discords or remember tunes, and who could not learn to sing or play with any amount of study. The gradations, too, are here quite as great as in mathematics or pictorial art, and the special faculty of the great musical composer must be reckoned many hundreds or perhaps thousands of times greater than that of the ordinary "unmusical" person above referred to.

It appears then, that, both on account of the limited number of persons gifted with the mathematical, the artistic, or the musical faculty, as well as from the enormous variations in its development, these mental powers differ widely from those which are essential to man, and are, for the most part, common to him and the lower animals; and that they could not, therefore, possibly have been developed in him by means of the law of natural selection.

We have thus shown, by two distinct lines of argument, that faculties are developed in civilised man which, both in their mode of origin, their function, and their variations, are altogether distinct from those other characters and faculties which are essential to him, and which have been brought to their actual state of efficiency by the necessities of his existence. And besides the three which have been specially referred to, there are others which evidently belong to the same cla.s.s.

Such is the metaphysical faculty, which enables us to form abstract conceptions of a kind the most remote from all practical applications, to discuss the ultimate causes of things, the nature and qualities of matter, motion, and force, of s.p.a.ce and time, of cause and effect, of will and conscience. Speculations on these abstract and difficult questions are impossible to savages, who seem to have no mental faculty enabling them to grasp the essential ideas or conceptions; yet whenever any race attains to civilisation, and comprises a body of people who, whether as priests or philosophers, are relieved from the necessity of labour or of taking an active part in war or government, the metaphysical faculty appears to spring suddenly into existence, although, like the other faculties we have referred to, it is always confined to a very limited proportion of the population.

In the same cla.s.s we may place the peculiar faculty of wit and humour, an altogether natural gift whose development appears to be parallel with that of the other exceptional faculties. Like them, it is almost unknown among savages, but appears more or less frequently as civilisation advances and the interests of life become more numerous and more complex. Like them, too, it is altogether removed from utility in the struggle for life, and appears sporadically in a very small percentage of the population; the majority being, as is well known, totally unable to say a witty thing or make a pun even to save their lives.[236]

_The Interpretation of the Facts._

The facts now set forth prove the existence of a number of mental faculties which either do not exist at all or exist in a very rudimentary condition in savages, but appear almost suddenly and in perfect development in the higher civilised races. These same faculties are further distinguished by their sporadic character, being well developed only in a very small proportion of the community; and by the enormous amount of variation in their development, the higher manifestations of them being many times--perhaps a hundred or a thousand times--stronger than the lower. Each of these characteristics is totally inconsistent with any action of the law of natural selection in the production of the faculties referred to; and the facts, taken in their entirety, compel us to recognise some origin for them wholly distinct from that which has served to account for the animal characteristics--whether bodily or mental--of man.

The special faculties we have been discussing clearly point to the existence in man of something which he has not derived from his animal progenitors--something which we may best refer to as being of a spiritual essence or nature, capable of progressive development under favourable conditions. On the hypothesis of this spiritual nature, superadded to the animal nature of man, we are able to understand much that is otherwise mysterious or unintelligible in regard to him, especially the enormous influence of ideas, principles, and beliefs over his whole life and actions. Thus alone we can understand the constancy of the martyr, the unselfishness of the philanthropist, the devotion of the patriot, the enthusiasm of the artist, and the resolute and persevering search of the scientific worker after nature's secrets. Thus we may perceive that the love of truth, the delight in beauty, the pa.s.sion for justice, and the thrill of exultation with which we hear of any act of courageous self-sacrifice, are the workings within us of a higher nature which has not been developed by means of the struggle for material existence.

It will, no doubt, be urged that the admitted continuity of man's progress from the brute does not admit of the introduction of new causes, and that we have no evidence of the sudden change of nature which such introduction would bring about. The fallacy as to new causes involving any breach of continuity, or any sudden or abrupt change, in the effects, has already been shown; but we will further point out that there are at least three stages in the development of the organic world when some new cause or power must necessarily have come into action.

The first stage is the change from inorganic to organic, when the earliest vegetable cell, or the living protoplasm out of which it arose, first appeared. This is often imputed to a mere increase of complexity of chemical compounds; but increase of complexity, with consequent instability, even if we admit that it may have produced protoplasm as a chemical compound, could certainly not have produced _living_ protoplasm--protoplasm which has the power of growth and of reproduction, and of that continuous process of development which has resulted in the marvellous variety and complex organisation of the whole vegetable kingdom. There is in all this something quite beyond and apart from chemical changes, however complex; and it has been well said that the first vegetable cell was a new thing in the world, possessing altogether new powers--that of extracting and fixing carbon from the carbon-dioxide of the atmosphere, that of indefinite reproduction, and, still more marvellous, the power of variation and of reproducing those variations till endless complications of structure and varieties of form have been the result. Here, then, we have indications of a new power at work, which we may term _vitality_, since it gives to certain forms of matter all those characters and properties which const.i.tute Life.

The next stage is still more marvellous, still more completely beyond all possibility of explanation by matter, its laws and forces. It is the introduction of sensation or consciousness, const.i.tuting the fundamental distinction between the animal and vegetable kingdoms. Here all idea of mere complication of structure producing the result is out of the question. We feel it to be altogether preposterous to a.s.sume that at a certain stage of complexity of atomic const.i.tution, and as a necessary result of that complexity alone, an _ego_ should start into existence, a thing that _feels_, that is _conscious_ of its own existence. Here we have the certainty that something new has arisen, a being whose nascent consciousness has gone on increasing in power and definiteness till it has culminated in the higher animals. No verbal explanation or attempt at explanation--such as the statement that life is the result of the molecular forces of the protoplasm, or that the whole existing organic universe from the amaeba up to man was latent in the fire-mist from which the solar system was developed--can afford any mental satisfaction, or help us in any way to a solution of the mystery.

The third stage is, as we have seen, the existence in man of a number of his most characteristic and n.o.blest faculties, those which raise him furthest above the brutes and open up possibilities of almost indefinite advancement. These faculties could not possibly have been developed by means of the same laws which have determined the progressive development of the organic world in general, and also of man's physical organism.[237]

These three distinct stages of progress from the inorganic world of matter and motion up to man, point clearly to an unseen universe--to a world of spirit, to which the world of matter is altogether subordinate.

To this spiritual world we may refer the marvellously complex forces which we know as gravitation, cohesion, chemical force, radiant force, and electricity, without which the material universe could not exist for a moment in its present form, and perhaps not at all, since without these forces, and perhaps others which may be termed atomic, it is doubtful whether matter itself could have any existence. And still more surely can we refer to it those progressive manifestations of Life in the vegetable, the animal, and man--which we may cla.s.sify as unconscious, conscious, and intellectual life,--and which probably depend upon different degrees of spiritual influx. I have already shown that this involves no necessary infraction of the law of continuity in physical or mental evolution; whence it follows that any difficulty we may find in discriminating the inorganic from the organic, the lower vegetable from the lower animal organisms, or the higher animals from the lowest types of man, has no bearing at all upon the question. This is to be decided by showing that a change in essential nature (due, probably, to causes of a higher order than those of the material universe) took place at the several stages of progress which I have indicated; a change which may be none the less real because absolutely imperceptible at its point of origin, as is the change that takes place in the curve in which a body is moving when the application of some new force causes the curve to be slightly altered.

_Concluding Remarks._

Those who admit my interpretation of the evidence now adduced--strictly scientific evidence in its appeal to facts which are clearly what ought _not_ to be on the materialistic theory--will be able to accept the spiritual nature of man, as not in any way inconsistent with the theory of evolution, but as dependent on those fundamental laws and causes which furnish the very materials for evolution to work with. They will also be relieved from the crushing mental burthen imposed upon those who--maintaining that we, in common with the rest of nature, are but products of the blind eternal forces of the universe, and believing also that the time must come when the sun will lose his heat and all life on the earth necessarily cease--have to contemplate a not very distant future in which all this glorious earth--which for untold millions of years has been slowly developing forms of life and beauty to culminate at last in man--shall be as if it had never existed; who are compelled to suppose that all the slow growths of our race struggling towards a higher life, all the agony of martyrs, all the groans of victims, all the evil and misery and undeserved suffering of the ages, all the struggles for freedom, all the efforts towards justice, all the aspirations for virtue and the wellbeing of humanity, shall absolutely vanish, and, "like the baseless fabric of a vision, leave not a wrack behind."

As contrasted with this hopeless and soul-deadening belief, we, who accept the existence of a spiritual world, can look upon the universe as a grand consistent whole adapted in all its parts to the development of spiritual beings capable of indefinite life and perfectibility. To us, the whole purpose, the only _raison d'etre_ of the world--with all its complexities of physical structure, with its grand geological progress, the slow evolution of the vegetable and animal kingdoms, and the ultimate appearance of man--was the development of the human spirit in a.s.sociation with the human body. From the fact that the spirit of man--the man himself--_is_ so developed, we may well believe that this is the only, or at least the best, way for its development; and we may even see in what is usually termed "evil" on the earth, one of the most efficient means of its growth. For we know that the n.o.blest faculties of man are strengthened and perfected by struggle and effort; it is by unceasing warfare against physical evils and in the midst of difficulty and danger that energy, courage, self-reliance, and industry have become the common qualities of the northern races; it is by the battle with moral evil in all its hydra-headed forms, that the still n.o.bler qualities of justice and mercy and humanity and self-sacrifice have been steadily increasing in the world. Beings thus trained and strengthened by their surroundings, and possessing latent faculties capable of such n.o.ble development, are surely destined for a higher and more permanent existence; and we may confidently believe with our greatest living poet--

That life is not as idle ore,

But iron dug from central gloom, And heated hot with burning fears, And dipt in baths of hissing tears, And batter'd with the shocks of doom

To shape and use.

We thus find that the Darwinian theory, even when carried out to its extreme logical conclusion, not only does not oppose, but lends a decided support to, a belief in the spiritual nature of man. It shows us how man's body may have been developed from that of a lower animal form under the law of natural selection; but it also teaches us that we possess intellectual and moral faculties which could not have been so developed, but must have had another origin; and for this origin we can only find an adequate cause in the unseen universe of Spirit.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 218: _Descent of Man_, pp. 41-43; also pp. 13-15.]

[Footnote 219: _Man's Place in Nature_, p. 64.]

[Footnote 220: _Man's Place in Nature_, p. 67. See Figs. of Embryos of Man and Dog in Darwin's _Descent of Man_, p. 10.]

[Footnote 221: _The Descent of Man_, pp. 7, 8.]

[Footnote 222: _Man and Apes._ By St. George Mivart, F.R.S., 1873. It is an interesting fact (for which I am indebted to Mr. E.B. Poulton) that the human embryo possesses the extra rib and wrist-bone referred to above in (2) and (4) as occurring in some of the apes.]

[Footnote 223: _Man and Apes_, pp. 138, 144.]

[Footnote 224: For a sketch of the evidence of Man's Antiquity in America, see _The Nineteenth Century_ for November 1887.]

[Footnote 225: This subject was first discussed in an article in the _Anthropological Review_, May 1864, and republished in my _Contributions to Natural Selection_, chap, ix, in 1870.]

[Footnote 226: _Man's Place in Nature_, p. 102.]

[Footnote 227: For a full discussion of this question, see the author's _Geographical Distribution of Animals_, vol. i. p. 285.]

[Footnote 228: For a full discussion of all these points, see _Descent of Man_, chap. iii.]

[Footnote 229: _Descent of Man_, chap. iv.]