Evolution in Modern Thought Part 14

[Footnote 187: _Ibid._ (Popular edit.), p. 82.]

[Footnote 188: _Comptes Rendus des Sciences_, June 1, 1868.]

[Footnote 189: _Nature_, Vol. LXI. pp. 624, 625 (1900).]

[Footnote 190: _Descent of Man_, Vol. I. p. 100.]

[Footnote 191: _Principles of Psychology_, Vol. II. p. 289.]

[Footnote 192: _Descent of Man_, Vol. I. p. 149.]

[Footnote 193: _Descent of Man_, p. 185.]

[Footnote 194: _Ibid._ p. 150 (footnote).]

VII

THE INFLUENCE OF THE CONCEPTION OF EVOLUTION ON MODERN PHILOSOPHY

BY H. HoFFDING

_Professor of Philosophy in the University of Copenhagen_

I

It is difficult to draw a sharp line between philosophy and natural science. The naturalist who introduces a new principle, or demonstrates a fact which throws a new light on existence, not only renders an important service to philosophy but is himself a philosopher in the broader sense of the word. The aim of philosophy in the stricter sense is to attain points of view from which the fundamental phenomena and the principles of the special sciences can be seen in their relative importance and connection. But philosophy in this stricter sense has always been influenced by philosophy in the broader sense. Greek philosophy came under the influence of logic and mathematics, modern philosophy under the influence of natural science.

The name of Charles Darwin stands with those of Galileo, Newton, and Robert Mayer--names which denote new problems and great alterations in our conception of the universe.

First of all we must lay stress on Darwin's own personality. His deep love of truth, his indefatigable inquiry, his wide horizon, and his steady self-criticism make him a scientific model, even if his results and theories should eventually come to possess mainly an historical interest.

In the intellectual domain the primary object is to reach high summits from which wide surveys are possible, to reach them toiling honestly upwards by the way of experience, and then not to turn dizzy when a summit is gained. Darwinians have sometimes turned dizzy, but Darwin never. He saw from the first the great importance of his hypothesis, not only because of its solution of the old problem as to the value of the concept of species, not only because of the grand picture of natural evolution which it unrolls, but also because of the life and inspiration its method would impart to the study of comparative anatomy, of instinct and of heredity, and finally because of the influence it would exert on the whole conception of existence. He wrote in his note-book in the year 1837: "My theory would give zest to recent and fossil comparative anatomy; it would lead to the study of instinct, heredity, and mind-heredity, whole [of]

metaphysics."[195]

We can distinguish four main points in which Darwin's investigations possess philosophical importance.

The evolution hypothesis is much older than Darwin; it is, indeed, one of the oldest guessings of human thought. In the eighteenth century is was put forward by Diderot and Lamettrie and suggested by Kant (1786).

As we shall see later, it was held also by several philosophers in the first half of the nineteenth century. In his preface to _The Origin of Species_, Darwin mentions the naturalists who were his forerunners.

But he has set forth the hypothesis of evolution in so energetic and thorough a manner that it perforce attracts the attention of all thoughtful men in a much higher degree than it did before the publication of the _Origin_.

And further, the importance of his teaching rests on the fact that he, much more than his predecessors, even than Lamarck, sought a foundation for his hypothesis in definite facts. Modern science began by demanding--with Kepler and Newton--evidence of _varae causae_; this demand Darwin industriously set himself to satisfy--hence the wealth of material which he collected by his observations and his experiments. He not only revived an old hypothesis, but he saw the necessity of verifying it by facts. Whether the special cause on which he founded the explanation of the origin of species--Natural Selection--is sufficient, is now a subject of discussion. He himself had some doubt in regard to this question, and the criticisms which are directed against his hypothesis. .h.i.t Darwinism rather than Darwin.

In his indefatigable search for empirical evidence he is a model even for his antagonists: he has compelled them to approach the problems of life along other lines than those which were formerly followed.

Whether the special cause to which Darwin appealed is sufficient or not, at least to it is probably due the greater part of the influence which he has exerted on the general trend of thought. "Struggle for existence" and "natural selection" are principles which have been applied, more or less, in every department of thought. Recent research, it is true, has discovered greater empirical discontinuity--leaps, "mutations"--whereas Darwin believed in the importance of small variations slowly acc.u.mulated. It has also been shown by the experimental method, which in recent biological work has succeeded Darwin's more historical method, that types once const.i.tuted possess great permanence, the fluctuations being restricted within clearly defined boundaries. The problem has become more precise, both as to variation and as to heredity. The inner conditions of life have in both respects shown a greater independence than Darwin had supposed in his theory, though he always admitted that the cause of variation was to him a great enigma, "a most perplexing problem," and that the struggle for life could only occur where variation existed. But, at any rate, it was of the greatest importance that Darwin gave a living impression of the struggle for life which is everywhere going on, and to which even the highest forms of existence must be amenable. The philosophical importance of these ideas does not stand or fall with the answer to the question, whether natural selection is a sufficient explanation of the origin of species or not it has an independent, positive value for everyone who will observe life and reality with an unbiased mind.

In accentuating the struggle for life Darwin stands as a characteristically English thinker: he continues a train of ideas which Hobbes and Malthus had already begun. Moreover in his critical views as to the conception of species he had English forerunners; in the middle ages Occam and Duns Scotus, in the eighteenth century Berkeley and Hume. In his moral philosophy, as we shall see later, he is an adherent of the school which is represented by Hutcheson, Home and Adam Smith. Because he is no philosopher in the stricter sense of the term, it is of great interest to see that his att.i.tude of mind is that of the great thinkers of his nation.

In considering Darwin's influence on philosophy we will begin with an examination of the att.i.tude of philosophy to the conception of evolution at the time when _The Origin of Species_ appeared. We will then examine the effects which the theory of evolution, and especially the idea of the struggle for life, has had, and naturally must have, on the discussion of philosophical problems.

II

When _The Origin of Species_ appeared fifty years ago Romantic speculation, Sch.e.l.ling's and Hegel's philosophy, still reigned on the continent, while in England Positivism, the philosophy of Comte and Stuart Mill, represented the most important trend of thought. German speculation had much to say on evolution, it even pretended to be a philosophy of evolution. But then the word "evolution" was to be taken in an ideal, not in a real, sense. To speculative thought the forms and types of nature formed a system of ideas, within which any form could lead us by continuous transitions to any other. It was a cla.s.sificatory system which was regarded as a divine world of thought or images, within which metamorphoses could go on--a condition comparable with that in the mind of the poet when one image follows another with imperceptible changes. Goethe's ideas of evolution, as expressed in his _Metamorphosen der Pflanzen und der Thiere_, belong to this category; it is, therefore, incorrect to call him a forerunner of Darwin. Sch.e.l.ling and Hegel held the same idea; Hegel expressly rejected the conception of a real evolution in time as coa.r.s.e and materialistic. "Nature," he says, "is to be considered as a _system of stages_, the one necessarily arising from the other, and being the nearest truth of that from which it proceeds; but not in such a way that the one is _naturally_ generated by the other; on the contrary [their connection lies] in the inner idea which is the ground of nature. The _metamorphosis_ can be ascribed only to the notion as such, because it alone is evolution.... It has been a clumsy idea in the older as well as in the newer philosophy of nature, to regard the transformation and the transition from one natural form and sphere to a higher as an outward and actual production."[196]

The only one of the philosophers of Romanticism who believed in a real, historical evolution, a real production of new species, was Oken.[197] Danish philosophers, such as Treschow (1812) and Sibbern (1846), have also broached the idea of an historical evolution of all living beings from the lowest to the highest. Schopenhauer's philosophy has a more realistic character than that of Sch.e.l.ling's and Hegel's, his diametrical opposites, although he also belongs to the romantic school of thought. His philosophical and psychological views were greatly influenced by French naturalists and philosophers, especially by Cabanis and Lamarck. He praises the "ever memorable Lamarck," because he laid so much stress on the "will to live." But he repudiates as a "wonderful error" the idea that the organs of animals should have reached their present perfection through a development in time, during the course of innumerable generations. It was, he said, a consequence of the low standard of contemporary French philosophy, that Lamarck came to the idea of the construction of living beings in time through succession![198]

The positivistic stream of thought was not more in favour of a real evolution than was the Romantic school. Its aim was to adhere to positive facts: it looked with suspicion on far-reaching speculation.

Comte laid great stress on the discontinuity found between the different kingdoms of nature, as well as within each single kingdom.

As he regarded as unscientific every attempt to reduce the number of physical forces, so he rejected entirely the hypothesis of Lamarck concerning the evolution of species; the idea of species would in his eyes absolutely lose its importance if a transition from species to species under the influence of conditions of life were admitted. His disciples (Littre, Robin) continued to direct against Darwin the polemics which their master had employed against Lamarck. Stuart Mill, who, in the theory of knowledge, represented the empirical or positivistic movement in philosophy--like his English forerunners from Locke to Hume--founded his theory of knowledge and morals on the experience of the single individual. He sympathised with the theory of the original likeness of all individuals and derived their differences, on which he practically and theoretically laid much stress, from the influence both of experience and education, and, generally, of physical and social causes. He admitted an individual evolution, and, in the human species, an evolution based on social progress; but no physiological evolution of species. He was afraid that the hypothesis of heredity would carry us back to the old theory of "innate" ideas.

Darwin was more empirical than Comte and Mill; experience disclosed to him a deeper continuity than they could find; closer than before the nature and fate of the single individual were shown to be interwoven in the great web binding the life of the species with nature as a whole. And the continuity which so many idealistic philosophers could find only in the world of thought, he showed to be present in the world of reality.

III

Darwin's energetic renewal of the old idea of evolution has its chief importance in strengthening the conviction of this real continuity in the world, of continuity in the series of form and events. It was a great support for all those who were prepared to base their conception of life on scientific grounds. Together with the recently discovered law of the conservation of energy, it helped to produce the great realistic movement which characterises the last third of the nineteenth century. After the decline of the Romantic movement people wished to have firmer ground under their feet and reality now a.s.serted itself in a more emphatic manner than in the period of Romanticism. It was easy for Hegel to proclaim that "the real" was "the rational," and that "the rational" was "the real": reality itself existed for him only in the interpretation of ideal reason, and if there was anything which could not be merged in the higher unity of thought, then it was only an example of the "impotence of nature to hold to the idea." But now concepts are to be founded on nature and not on any system of categories too confidently deduced _a priori_. The new devotion to nature had its recompense in itself, because the new points of view made us see that nature could indeed "hold to ideas," though perhaps not to those which we had cogitated beforehand.

A most important question for philosophers to answer was whether the new views were compatible with an idealistic conception of life and existence. Some proclaimed that we have now no need of any philosophy beyond the principles of the conservation of matter and energy and the principle of natural evolution: existence should and could be definitely and completely explained by the laws of material nature.

But abler thinkers saw that the thing was not so simple. They were prepared to give the new views their just place and to examine what alterations the old views must undergo in order to be brought into harmony with the new data.

The realistic character of Darwin's theory was shown not only in the idea of natural continuity, but also, and not least, in the idea of the cause whereby organic life advances step by step. This idea--the idea of the struggle for life--implied that nothing could persist, if it had no power to maintain itself under the given conditions. Inner value alone does not decide. Idealism was here put to its hardest trial. In continuous evolution it could perhaps still find an a.n.a.logy to the inner evolution of ideas in the mind; but in the demand for power in order to struggle with outward conditions Realism seemed to announce itself in its most brutal form. Every form of Idealism had to ask itself seriously how it was going to "struggle for life" with this new Realism.

We will now give a short account of the position which leading thinkers in different countries have taken up in regard to this question.

I. Herbert Spencer was the philosopher whose mind was best prepared by his own previous thinking to admit the theory of Darwin to a place in his conception of the world. His criticism of the arguments which had been put forward against the hypothesis of Lamarck, showed that Spencer, as a young man, was an adherent to the evolution idea. In his _Social Statics_ (1850) he applied this idea to human life and moral civilisation. In 1852 he wrote an essay on _The Development Hypothesis_, in which he definitely stated his belief that the differentiation of species, like the differentiation within a single organism, was the result of development. In the first edition of his _Psychology_ (1855) he took a step which put him in opposition to the older English school (from Locke to Mill): he acknowledged "innate ideas"

so far as to admit the tendency of acquired habits to be inherited in the course of generations, so that the nature and functions of the individual are only to be understood through its connection with the life of the species. In 1857, in his essay on _Progress_, he propounded the law of differentiation as a general law of evolution, verified by examples from all regions of experience, the evolution of species being only one of these examples. On the effect which the appearance of _The Origin of Species_ had on his mind he writes in his _Autobiography_: "Up to that time ... I held that the sole cause of organic evolution is the inheritance of functionally-produced modifications. The _Origin of Species_ made it clear to me that I was wrong, and that the larger part of the facts cannot be due to any such cause.... To have the theory of organic evolution justified was of course to get further support for that theory of evolution at large with which ... all my conceptions were bound up."[199] Instead of the metaphorical expression "natural selection," Spencer introduced the term "survival of the fittest," which found favour with Darwin as well as with Wallace.

In working out his ideas of evolution, Spencer found that differentiation was not the only form of evolution. In its simplest form evolution is mainly a concentration, previously scattered elements being integrated and losing independent movement.

Differentiation is only forthcoming when minor wholes arise within a greater whole. And the highest form of evolution is reached when there is a harmony between concentration and differentiation, a harmony which Spencer calls equilibration and which he defines as a moving equilibrium. At the same time this definition enables him to ill.u.s.trate the expression "survival of the fittest." "Every living organism exhibits such a moving equilibrium--a balanced set of functions const.i.tuting its life; and the overthrow of this balanced set of functions or moving equilibrium is what we call death. Some individuals in a species are so const.i.tuted that their moving equilibria are less easily overthrown than those of other individuals; and these are the fittest which survive, or, in Mr.

Darwin's language, they are the select which nature preserves."[200]

Not only in the domain of organic life, but in all domains, the summit of evolution is, according to Spencer, characterised by such a harmony--by a moving equilibrium.

Spencer's a.n.a.lysis of the concept of evolution, based on a great variety of examples, has made this concept clearer and more definite than before. It contains the three elements; integration, differentiation and equilibration. It is true that a concept which is to be valid for all domains of experience must have an abstract character, and between the several domains there is, strictly speaking, only a relation of a.n.a.logy. So there is only a.n.a.logy between psychical and physical evolution. But this is no serious objection, because general concepts do not express more than a.n.a.logies between the phenomena which they represent. Spencer takes his leading forms from the material world in defining evolution (in the simplest form) as integration of matter and dissipation of movement; but as he--not always quite consistently[201]--a.s.sumed a correspondence of mind and matter, he could very well give these terms an indirect importance for psychical evolution. Spencer has always, in my opinion with full right, repudiated the ascription of materialism. He is no more a materialist than Spinoza. In his _Principles of Psychology_ (-- 63) he expressed himself very clearly: "Though it seems easier to translate so-called matter into so-called spirit, than to translate so-called spirit into so-called matter--which latter is indeed wholly impossible--yet no translation can carry us beyond our symbols." These words lead us naturally to a group of thinkers whose starting-point was psychical evolution. But we have still one aspect of Spencer's philosophy to mention.

Spencer founded his "laws of evolution" on an inductive basis, but he was convinced that they could be deduced from the law of the conservation of energy. Such a deduction is, perhaps, possible for the more elementary forms of evolution, integration and differentiation; but it is not possible for the highest form, the equilibration, which is a harmony of integration and differentiation. Spencer can no more deduce the necessity for the eventual appearance of "moving equilibria" of harmonious totalities than Hegel could guarantee the "higher unities" in which all contradictions should be reconciled. In Spencer's hands the theory of evolution acquired a more decidedly optimistic character than in Darwin's; but I shall deal later with the relation of Darwin's hypothesis to the opposition of optimism and pessimism.

II. While the starting-point of Spencer was biological or cosmological, psychical evolution being conceived as in a.n.a.logy with physical, a group of eminent thinkers--in Germany Wundt, in France Fouillee, in Italy Ardig--took, each in his own manner, their starting-point in psychical evolution as an original fact and as a type of all evolution, the hypothesis of Darwin coming in as a corroboration and as a special example. They maintain the continuity of evolution; they find this character most prominent in psychical evolution, and this is for them a motive to demand a corresponding continuity in the material, especially in the organic domain.

To Wundt and Fouillee the concept of will is prominent. They see the type of all evolution in the transformation of the life of will from blind impulse to conscious choice; the theories of Lamarck and Darwin are used to support the view that there is in nature a tendency to evolution in steady reciprocity with external conditions. The struggle for life is here only a secondary fact. Its apparent prominence is explained by the circ.u.mstance that the influence of external conditions is easily made out, while inner conditions can be verified only through their effects. For Ardig the evolution of thought was the starting-point and the type: in the evolution of a scientific hypothesis we see a progress from the indefinite (_indistinto_) to the definite (_distinto_), and this is a characteristic of all evolution, as Ardig has pointed out in a series of works. The opposition between _indistinto_ and _distinto_ corresponds to Spencer's opposition between h.o.m.ogeneity and heterogeneity. The hypothesis of the origin of differences of species from more simple forms is a special example of the general law of evolution.

In the views of Wundt and Fouillee we find the fundamental idea of idealism psychical phenomena as expressions of the innermost nature of existence. They differ from the older Idealism in the great stress which they lay on evolution as a real, historical process which is going on through steady conflict with external conditions. The Romantic dread of reality is broken. It is beyond doubt that Darwin's emphasis on the struggle for life as a necessary condition of evolution has been a very important factor in carrying philosophy back to reality from the heaven of pure ideas. The philosophy of Ardig, on the other side, appears more as a continuation and deepening of positivism, though the Italian thinker arrived at his point of view independently of French-English positivism. The idea of continuous evolution is here maintained in opposition to Comte's and Mill's philosophy of discontinuity. From Wundt and Fouillee Ardig differs in conceiving psychical evolution not as an immediate revelation of the innermost nature of existence, but only as a single, though the most accessible example, of evolution.

III. To the French philosophers Boutroux and Bergson, evolution proper is continuous and qualitative, while outer experience and physical science give us fragments only, sporadic processes and mechanical combinations. To Bergson, in his recent work _L'Evolution Creatrice_, evolution consists in an _elan de vie_ which to our fragmentary observation and a.n.a.lytic reflexion appears as broken into a manifold of elements and processes. The concept of matter in its scientific form is the result of this breaking asunder, essential for all scientific reflexion. In these conceptions the strongest opposition between inner and outer conditions of evolution is expressed: in the domain of internal conditions spontaneous development of qualitative forms--in the domain of external conditions discontinuity and mechanical combination.

We see, then, that the theory of evolution has influenced philosophy in a variety of forms. It has made idealistic thinkers revise their relation to the real world; it has led positivistic thinkers to find a closer connection between the facts on which they based their views; it has made us all open our eyes for new possibilities to arise through the _prima facie_ inexplicable "spontaneous" variations which are the condition of all evolution. This last point is one of peculiar interest. Deeper than speculative philosophy and mechanical science saw in the days of their triumph, we catch sight of new streams, whose sources and laws we have still to discover. Most sharply does this appear in the theory of mutation, which is only a stronger accentuation of a main point in Darwinism. It is interesting to see that an a.n.a.logous problem comes into the foreground in physics through the discovery of radioactive phenomena, and in psychology through the a.s.sumption of psychical new formations (as held by Boutroux, William James and Bergson). From this side, Darwin's ideas, as well as the a.n.a.logous ideas in other domains, incite us to renewed examination of our first principles, their rationality and their value. On the other hand, his theory of the struggle for existence challenges us to examine the conditions and discuss the outlook as to the persistence of human life and society and of the values that belong to them. It is not enough to hope (or fear?) the rising of new forms; we have also to investigate the possibility of upholding the forms and ideals which have hitherto been the bases of human life. Darwin has here given his age the most earnest and most impressive lesson. This side of Darwin's theory is of peculiar interest to some special philosophical problems to which I now pa.s.s.