The Evolution of Man Volume Ii Part 19

If we now turn from the comparative study of psychic life in different animals to the question of the organs of this function, we receive the answer that in all the higher animals they are always bound up with certain groups of cells, the ganglionic cells or neurona that compose the nervous system. All scientists without exception are agreed that the central nervous system is the organ of psychic life in the animal, and it is possible to prove this experimentally at any moment. When we partially or wholly destroy the central nervous system, we extinguish in the same proportion, partially or wholly, the "soul" or psychic activity of the animal. We have, therefore, to examine the features of the psychic organ in man. The reader already knows the incontestable answer to this question. Man's psychic organ is, in structure and origin, just the same organ as in all the other Vertebrates. It originates in the shape of a simple medullary tube from the outer membrane of the embryo--the skin-sense layer. The simple cerebral vesicle that is formed by the expansion of the head-part of this medullary tube divides by transverse constrictions into five, and these pa.s.s through more or less the same stages of construction in the human embryo as in the rest of the mammals. As these are undoubtedly of a common origin, their brain and spinal cord must also have a common origin.

Physiology teaches us further, on the ground of observation and experiment, that the relation of the "soul" to its organ, the brain and spinal cord, is just the same in man as in the other mammals. The one cannot act at all without the other; it is just as much bound up with it as muscular movement is with the muscles. It can only develop in connection with it. If we are evolutionists at all, and grant the causal connection of ontogenesis and phylogenesis, we are forced to admit this thesis: The human soul or psyche, as a function of the medullary tube, has developed along with it; and just as brain and spinal cord now develop from the simple medullary tube in every human individual, so the human mind or the psychic life of the whole human race has been gradually evolved from the lower vertebrate soul. Just as to-day the intricate structure of the brain proceeds step by step from the same rudiment in every human individual--the same five cerebral vesicles--as in all the other Craniotes; so the human soul has been gradually developed in the course of millions of years from a long series of craniote-souls. Finally, just as to-day in every human embryo the various parts of the brain differentiate after the special type of the ape-brain, so the human psyche has proceeded historically from the ape-soul.

It is true that this Monistic conception is rejected with horror by most men, and the Dualistic idea, which denies the inseparable connection of brain and mind, and regards body and soul as two totally different things, is still popular. But how can we reconcile this view with the known facts of evolution? It meets with difficulties equally great and insuperable in embryology and in phylogeny. If we suppose with the majority of men that the soul is an independent ent.i.ty, which has nothing to do with the body originally, but merely inhabits it for a time, and gives expression to its experiences through the brain just as the pianist does through his instrument, we must a.s.sign a point in human embryology at which the soul enters into the brain; and at death again we must a.s.sign a moment at which it abandons the body. As, further, each human individual has inherited certain personal features from each parent, we must suppose that in the act of conception pieces were detached from their souls and transferred to the embryo. A piece of the paternal soul goes with-the spermatozoon, and a piece of the mother's soul remains in the ovum. At the moment of conception, when portions of the two nuclei of the copulating cells join together to form the nucleus of the stem-cell, the accompanying fragments of the immaterial souls must also be supposed to coalesce.

On this Dualistic view the phenomena of psychic development are totally incomprehensible. Everybody knows that the new-born child has no consciousness, no knowledge of itself and the surrounding world.

Every parent who has impartially followed the mental development of his children will find it impossible to deny that it is a case of biological evolutionary processes. Just as all other functions of the body develop in connection with their organs, so the soul does in connection with the brain. This gradual unfolding of the soul of the child is, in fact, so wonderful and glorious a phenomenon that every mother or father who has eyes to observe is never tired of contemplating it. It is only our manuals of psychology that know nothing of this development; we are almost tempted to think sometimes that their authors can never have had children themselves. The human soul, as described in most of our psychological works, is merely the soul of a learned philosopher, who has read a good many books, but knows nothing of evolution, and never even reflects that his own soul has had a development.

When these Dualistic philosophers are consistent they must a.s.sign a moment in the phylogeny of the human soul at which it was first "introduced" into man's vertebrate body. Hence, at the time when the human body was evolved from the anthropoid body of the ape (probably in the Tertiary period), a specific human psychic element--or, as people love to say, "a spark of divinity"--must have been suddenly infused or breathed into the anthropoid brain, and been a.s.sociated with the ape-soul already present in it. I need not insist on the enormous theoretical difficulties of this idea. I will only point out that this "spark of divinity," which is supposed to distinguish the soul of man from that of the other animals, must be itself capable of development, and has, as a matter of fact, progressively developed in the course of human history. As a rule, reason is taken to be this "spark of divinity," and is supposed to be an exclusive possession of humanity. But comparative psychology shows us that it is quite impossible to set up this barrier between man and the brute. Either we take the word "reason" in the wider sense, and then it is found in the higher mammals (ape, dog, elephant, horse) just as well as in most men; or else in the narrower sense, and then it is lacking in most men just as much as in the majority of animals. On the whole, we may still say of man's reason what Goethe's Mephistopheles said:--

Life somewhat better might content him But for the gleam of heavenly light that Thou hast given him.

He calls it reason; thence his power's increased To be still beastlier than any beast.

If, then, we must reject these popular and, in some respects, agreeable Dualistic theories as untenable, because inconsistent with the genetic facts, there remains only the opposite or Monistic conception, according to which the human soul is, like any other animal soul, a function of the central nervous system, and develops in inseparable connection therewith. We see this ontogenetically in every child. The biogenetic law compels us to affirm it phylogenetically.

Just as in every human embryo the skin-sense layer gives rise to the medullary tube, from the anterior end of which the five cerebral vesicles of the Craniotes are developed, and from these the mammal brain (first with the characters of the lower, then with those of the higher mammals); and as the whole of this ontogenetic process is only a brief, hereditary reproduction of the same process in the phylogenesis of the Vertebrates; so the wonderful spiritual life of the human race through many thousands of years has been evolved step by step from the lowly psychic life of the lower Vertebrates, and the development of every child-soul is only a brief repet.i.tion of that long and complex phylogenetic process. From all these facts sound reason must conclude that the still prevalent belief in the immortality of the soul is an untenable superst.i.tion. I have shown its inconsistency with modern science in the eleventh chapter of The Riddle of the Universe.

Here it may also be well to point out the great importance of anthropogeny, in the light of the biogenetic law, for the purposes of philosophy. The speculative philosophers who take cognizance of these ontogenetic facts, and explain them (in accordance with the law) phylogenetically, will advance the great questions of philosophy far more than the most distinguished thinkers of all ages have yet succeeded in doing. Most certainly every clear and consistent thinker must derive from the facts of comparative anatomy and ontogeny we have adduced a number of suggestive ideas that cannot fail to have an influence on the progress of philosophy. Nor can it be doubted that the candid statement and impartial appreciation of these facts will lead to the decisive triumph of the philosophic tendency that we call "Monistic" or "Mechanical," as opposed to the "Dualistic" or "Teleological," on which most of the ancient, medieval, and modern systems of philosophy are based. The Monistic or Mechanical philosophy affirms that all the phenomena of human life and of the rest of nature are ruled by fixed and unalterable laws; that there is everywhere a necessary causal connection of phenomena; and that, therefore, the whole knowable universe is a harmonious unity, a monon. It says, further, that all phenomena are due solely to mechanical or efficient causes, not to final causes. It does not admit free-will in the ordinary sense of the word. In the light of the Monistic philosophy the phenomena that we are wont to regard as the freest and most independent, the expressions of the human will, are subject just as much to rigid laws as any other natural phenomenon. As a matter of fact, impartial and thorough examination of our "free" volitions shows that they are never really free, but always determined by antecedent factors that can be traced to either heredity or adaptation. We cannot, therefore, admit the conventional distinction between nature and spirit. There is spirit everywhere in nature, and we know of no spirit outside of nature. Hence, also, the common ant.i.thesis of natural science and mental or moral science is untenable. Every science, as such, is both natural and mental. That is a firm principle of Monism, which, on its religious side, we may also denominate Pantheism. Man is not above, but in, nature.

It is true that the opponents of evolution love to misrepresent the Monistic philosophy based on it as "Materialism," and confuse the philosophic tendency of this name with a wholly unconnected and despicable moral materialism. Strictly speaking, it would be just as proper to call our system Spiritualism as Materialism. The real Materialistic philosophy affirms that the phenomena of life are, like all other phenomena, effects or products of matter. The opposite extreme, the Spiritualistic philosophy, says, on the contrary, that matter is a product of energy, and that all material forms are produced by free and independent forces. Thus, according to one-sided Materialism, the matter is antecedent to the living force; according to the equally one-sided view of the Spiritist, it is the reverse.

Both views are Dualistic, and, in my opinion, both are false. For us the ant.i.thesis disappears in the Monistic philosophy, which knows neither matter without force nor force without matter. It is only necessary to reflect for some time over the question from the strictly scientific point of view to see that it is impossible to form a clear idea of either hypothesis. As Goethe said, "Matter can never exist or act without spirit, nor spirit without matter."

The human "spirit" or "soul" is merely a force or form of energy, inseparably bound up with the material sub-stratum of the body. The thinking force of the mind is just as much connected with the structural elements of the brain as the motor force of the muscles with their structural elements. Our mental powers are functions of the brain as much as any other force is a function of a material body. We know of no matter that is devoid of force, and no forces that are not bound up with matter. When the forces enter into the phenomenon as movements we call them living or active forces; when they are in a state of rest or equilibrium we call them latent or potential. This applies equally to inorganic and organic bodies. The magnet that attracts iron filings, the powder that explodes, the steam that drives the locomotive, are living inorganics; they act by living force as much as the sensitive Mimosa does when it contracts its leaves at touch, or the venerable Amphioxus that buries itself in the sand of the sea, or man when he thinks. Only in the latter cases the combinations of the different forces that appear as "movement" in the phenomenon are much more intricate and difficult to a.n.a.lyse than in the former.

Our study has led us to the conclusion that in the whole evolution of man, in his embryology and in his phylogeny, there are no living forces at work other than those of the rest of organic and inorganic nature. All the forces that are operative in it could be reduced in the ultimate a.n.a.lysis to growth, the fundamental evolutionary function that brings about the forms of both the organic and the inorganic. But growth itself depends on the attraction and repulsion of h.o.m.ogeneous and heterogeneous particles. Seventy-five years ago Carl Ernst von Baer summed up the general result of his cla.s.sic studies of animal development in the sentence: "The evolution of the individual is the history of the growth of individuality in every respect." And if we go deeper to the root of this law of growth, we find that in the long run it can always be reduced to that attraction and repulsion of animated atoms which Empedocles called the "love and hatred" of the elements.

Thus the evolution of man is directed by the same "eternal, iron laws"

as the development of any other body. These laws always lead us back to the same simple principles, the elementary principles of physics and chemistry. The various phenomena of nature only differ in the degree of complexity in which the different forces work together. Each single process of adaptation and heredity in the stem-history of our ancestors is in itself a very complex physiological phenomenon. Far more intricate are the processes of human embryology; in these are condensed and comprised thousands of the phylogenetic processes.

In my General Morphology, which appeared in 1866, I made the first attempt to apply the theory of evolution, as reformed by Darwin, to the whole province of biology, and especially to provide with its a.s.sistance a mechanical foundation for the science of organic forms.

The intimate relations that exist between all parts of organic science, especially the direct causal nexus between the two sections of evolution--ontogeny and phylogeny--were explained in that work for the first time by transformism, and were interpreted philosophically in the light of the theory of descent. The anthropological part of the General Morphology (Book 7) contains the first attempt to determine the series of man's ancestors (volume 2 page 428). However imperfect this attempt was, it provided a starting-point for further investigation. In the thirty-seven years that have since elapsed the biological horizon has been enormously widened; our empirical acquisitions in paleontology, comparative anatomy, and ontogeny have grown to an astonishing extent, thanks to the united efforts of a number of able workers and the employment of better methods. Many important biological questions that then appeared to be obscure enigmas seem to be entirely settled. Darwinism arose like the dawn of a new day of clear Monistic science after the dark night of mystic dogmatism, and we can say now, proudly and gladly, that there is daylight in our field of inquiry.

Philosophers and others, who are equally ignorant of the empirical sources of our evidence and the phylogenetic methods of utilising it, have even lately claimed that in the matter of constructing our genealogical tree nothing more has been done than the discovery of a "gallery of ancestors," such as we find in the mansions of the n.o.bility. This would be quite true if the genealogy given in the second part of this work were merely the juxtaposition of a series of animal forms, of which we gathered the genetic connection from their external physiognomic resemblances. As we have sufficiently proved already, it is for us a question of a totally different thing--of the morphological and historical proof of the phylogenetic connection of these ancestors on the basis of their ident.i.ty in internal structure and embryonic development; and I think I have sufficiently shown in the first part of this work how far this is calculated to reveal to us their inner nature and its historical development. I see the essence of its significance precisely in the proof of historical connection. I am one of those scientists who believe in a real "natural history,"

and who think as much of an historical knowledge of the past as of an exact investigation of the present. The incalculable value of the historical consciousness cannot be sufficiently emphasised at a time when historical research is ignored and neglected, and when an "exact"

school, as dogmatic as it is narrow, would subst.i.tute for it physical experiments and mathematical formulae. Historical knowledge cannot be replaced by any other branch of science.

It is clear that the prejudices that stand in the way of a general recognition of this "natural anthropogeny" are still very great; otherwise the long struggle of philosophic systems would have ended in favour of Monism. But we may confidently expect that a more general acquaintance with the genetic facts will gradually destroy these prejudices, and lead to the triumph of the natural conception of "man's place in nature." When we hear it said, in face of this expectation, that this would lead to retrogression in the intellectual and moral development of mankind, I cannot refrain from saying that, in my opinion, it will be just the reverse; that it will promote to an enormous extent the advance of the human mind. All progress in our knowledge of truth means an advance in the higher cultivation of the human intelligence; and all progress in its application to practical life implies a corresponding improvement of morality. The worst enemies of the human race--ignorance and superst.i.tion--can only be vanquished by truth and reason. In any case, I hope and desire to have convinced the reader of these chapters that the true scientific comprehension of the human frame can only be attained in the way that we recognise to be the sole sound and effective one in organic science generally--namely, the way of Evolution.