The Whence and the Whither of Man Part 1

The Whence and the Whither of Man.

by John Mason Tyler.

INTRODUCTION

In the year 1865 Professor Samuel Finley Breese Morse, to whom the world is indebted for the application of the principles of electro-magnetism to telegraphy, gave the sum of ten thousand dollars to Union Theological Seminary to found a lectureship in memory of his father, the Rev. Jedediah Morse, D.D., theologian, geographer, and gazetteer. The subject of the lectures was to have to do with "The relations of the Bible to any of the sciences." The ten chapters of this book correspond to ten lectures, eight of which were delivered as Morse Lectures at Union Theological Seminary during the early spring of 1895. The first nine chapters appear in form and substance as they were given in the lectures, except that Chapters VI. and VII. were condensed in one lecture. Chapter X. is new, and I have not hesitated to add a few paragraphs wherever the argument seemed especially to demand further evidence or ill.u.s.tration.

One of my friends, reading the t.i.tle of these lectures, said: "Of man's origin you know nothing, of his future you know less." I fear that many share his opinion, although they might not express it so emphatically.

It would seem, therefore, to be in order to show that science is now competent to deal with this question; not that she can give a final and conclusive answer, but that we can reach results which are probably in the main correct. We may grant very cheerfully that we can attain no demonstration; the most that we can claim for our results will be a high degree of probability. If our conclusions are very probably correct, we shall do well to act according to them; for all our actions in life are suited to meet the emergencies of a probable but uncertain course of events.

We take for granted the probable truth of the theory of evolution as stated by Mr. Darwin, and that it applies to man as really as to any lower animal. At the same time it concerns our argument but little whether natural selection is "omnipotent" or of only secondary importance in evolution, as long as it is a real factor, or which theory of heredity or variation is the more probable.

If man has been evolved from simple living substance protoplasm, by a process of evolution, it will some day be possible to write a history of that process. But have we yet sufficient knowledge to justify such an attempt?

Before the history of any period can be written its events must have been accurately chronicled. Biological history can be written only when the successive stages of development and the attainments of each stage have been clearly perceived. In other words, the first prerequisite would seem to be a genealogical[A] tree of the animal kingdom. The means of tracing this genealogical tree are given in the first chapter, and the results in the second, third, and fourth chapters of this book.

[Footnote A: See Phylogenetic Chart, p. 310.]

Now, for some of the ancestral stages of man's development a very high degree of probability can be claimed. One of man's earliest ancestors was almost certainly a unicellular animal. A little later he very probably pa.s.sed through a gastraea stage. He traversed fish, amphibian, and reptilian grades. The oviparous monotreme and the marsupial almost certainly represent lower mammalian ancestral stages. But what kind of fish, what species of amphibian, what form of reptiles most closely resembles the old ancestor? How did each of these ancestors look? I do not know. It looks as if our ancestral tree were entirely uncertain and we were left without any foundation for history or argument.

But the history of the development of anatomical details, however important and desirable, is not the only history which can be written, nor is it essential. It would be interesting to know the size of brain, girth of chest, average stature, and the features of the ancient Greeks and Romans. But this is not the most important part of their history, nor is it essential. The great question is, What did they contribute to human progress?

Even if we cannot accurately portray the anatomical details of a single ancestral stage, can we perhaps discover what function governed its life and was the aim of its existence? Did it live to eat, or to move, or to think? If we cannot tell exactly how it looked, can we tell what it lived for and what it contributed to the evolution of man?

Now, the sequence of dominant functions or aims in life can be traced with far more ease and safety, not to say certainty, than one of anatomical details. The latter characterize small groups, genera, families, or cla.s.ses; while the dominant function characterizes all animals of a given grade, even those which through degeneration have reverted to this grade.

Even if I cannot trace the exact path which leads to the mountain-top, I may almost with certainty affirm that it leads from meadow and pasture through forest to bare rock, and thence over snow and ice to the summit; for each of these forms a zone encircling the mountain. Very similarly I find that, whatever genealogical tree I adopt, one sequence in the dominance of functions characterizes them all; digestion is dominant before locomotion and locomotion before thought.

And it is hardly less than a physiological necessity that it should be so. The plant can and does exist, living almost purely for digestion and reproduction, and the same is true of the lowest and most primitive animals. A muscular system cannot develop and do its work until some sort of a digestive system has arisen to furnish nutriment, any more than a steam-engine can run without fuel. And a brain is of no use until muscle and sense-organs have appeared.

This sequence of dominant functions,[A] of physiological dynasties, would seem therefore to be a fact. And our series of forms described in the second, third, and fourth chapters is merely a concrete ill.u.s.tration showing how this sequence may have been evolved. The subst.i.tution of other terms in the anatomical series there described--amoeba, volvox, etc.--would not affect this result. By a change in the form of our history we have eliminated to a large extent the sources of uncertainty and error. And the dominant function of a group throws no little light on the details of its anatomy.

[Footnote A: See condensed Chart of Development, etc., p. 309.]

If we can be satisfied that ever higher functions have risen to dominance in the successive stages of animal and human development, if we can further be convinced that the sequence is irreversible, we shall be convinced that future man will be more and more completely controlled by the very highest powers or aims to which this sequence points. Otherwise we must disbelieve the continuity of history. But the germs of the future are always concealed in the history of the present. Hence--pardon the reiteration--if we can once trace this sequence of dominant functions, whose evolution has filled past ages, we can safely foretell something at least of man's future development.

The argument and method is therefore purely historical. Here and there we will try to find why and how things had to be so. But all such digressions are of small account compared with the fact that things were or are thus and so. And a mistaken explanation will not invalidate the facts of history.

The subject of our history is the development, not of a single human race nor of the movements of a century, but the development of animal life through ages. And even if our attempts to decipher a few pages here and there in the volumes of this vast biological history are not as successful as we could hope, we must not allow ourselves to be discouraged from future efforts. Even if our translation is here and there at fault, we must never forget the existence of the history. Some of the worst errors of biologists are due to their having forgotten that in the lower stages the germs of the higher must be present, even though invisible to any microscope. Our study of the worm is inadequate and likely to mislead us, unless we remember that a worm was the ancestor of man. And a biologist who can tell us nothing about man is neglecting his fairest field.

Conversely history and social science will rest on a firmer basis when their students recognize that many human laws and inst.i.tutions are heirlooms, the attainments, or direct results of attainments, of animals far below man. We are just beginning to recognize that the study of zoology is an essential prerequisite to, and firm foundation for, that of history, social science, philosophy, and theology, just as really as for medicine. An adequate knowledge of any history demands more than the study of its last page. The zoologist has been remiss in not claiming his birthright, and in this respect has sadly failed to follow the path pointed out by Mr.

Darwin.

For palaeontology, zoology, history, social and political science, and philosophy are really only parts of one great science, of biology in the widest sense, in distinction from the narrower sense in which it is now used to include zoology and botany. They form an organic unity in which no one part can be adequately understood without reference to the others. You know nothing of even a constellation, if you have studied only one of its stars. Much less can the study of a single organ or function give an adequate idea of the human body.

Only when we have attained a biological history can we have any satisfactory conception of environment. As we look about us in the world, environment often seems to us to be a chaos of forces aiding or destroying good and bad, fit and unfit, alike.

But our history of animal and human progress shows us successive stages, each a little higher than the preceding, and surviving, for a time at least, because more completely conformed to environment.

If this be true, and it must be true unless our theory of evolution be false, higher forms are more completely conformed to their environment than lower; and man has attained the most complete conformity of all. Our biological history is therefore a record of the results of successive efforts, each attaining a little more complete conformity than the preceding. From such a history we ought to be able to draw certain valid deductions concerning the general character and laws of our environment, to discover the direction in which its forces are urging us, and how man can more completely conform to it.

If man is a product of evolution, his mental and moral, just as really as his physical, development must be the result of such a conformity. The study of environment from this standpoint should throw some light on the validity of our moral and religious creeds and theories. It would seem, therefore, not only justifiable, but imperative to attempt such a study.

Our argument is not directly concerned with modern theories of heredity, or variation, or with the "omnipotence" or secondary importance of natural selection. And yet Nageli, and especially Weismann, have had so marked an influence on modern thought that we cannot afford to neglect their theories. We will briefly notice these in the closing chapter.

CHAPTER I

THE PROBLEM: THE MODE OF ITS SOLUTION

The story of a human life can be told in very few words. A youth of golden dreams and visions; a few years of struggle or of neglected opportunities; then retrospect and the end.

"We come like water, and like wind we go."

But how few of the visions are realized. Faust sums up the whole of life in the twice-repeated word _versagen_, renounce, and history tells a similar story. Terah died in Haran; Abraham obtained but a grave in the land promised him and his children; Jacob, cheated in marriage, bitterly disappointed in his children, died in exile, leaving his descendants to become slaves in the land of Egypt; and Moses, their heroic deliverer, died in the mountains of Moab in sight of the land which he was forbidden to enter. You may answer that it is no injury that the promise is too large, the vision too grand, to be fulfilled in the span of a single life, but must become the heritage of a race. But what has been the history of Abraham's descendants? A death-grapple for existence, captivity, and dispersion. Their national existence has long been lost.

Was there ever a nation of grander promise than Greece or Rome? But Greece died of premature old age, and Rome of rottenness begotten of sin. But each of them, you will say, left a priceless heritage to the immortal race. But if Greece and Rome and a host of older nations, of which History has often forgotten the very name, have failed and died, can anything but ultimate failure await the race?

Is human history to prove a story told by an idiot, or does it "signify" something? Is the great march of humanity, which Carlyle so vividly depicts, "from the inane to the inane, or from G.o.d to G.o.d?"

This is the sphinx question put to every thinking man, and on his answer hangs his life. For according to that answer, he will either flinch and turn back, or expend every drop of blood and grain of power in urging on the march.

To this question the Bible gives a clear and emphatic answer. "G.o.d created man in his own image," and then, as if men might refuse to believe so astounding a statement, it is repeated, "in the image of G.o.d created he him." When, and by what mode or process, man was created we are not told. His origin is condensed almost into a line, his present and future occupy all the rest of the book. Whence we came is important only in so far as it teaches us humility and yet a.s.sures us that we may be G.o.dlike because we are His handiwork and children, "heirs of G.o.d and joint heirs with Christ of a heavenly inheritance."

Now has Science any answer to this vital question? Perhaps. But this much is certain; it can foretell the future only from the past. Its answer to the question _whither_ must be an inference from its knowledge as to _whence_ we have come. The Bible looks mainly at the present and future; Science must at least begin with the study of the past. The deciphering of man's past history is the great aim of Biology, and ultimately of all Science. For the question of Man's past is only a part of a greater question, the origin of all living species.

We may say broadly that concerning the origin of species two theories, and only two, seem possible. The first theory is that every species is the result of an act of immediate creation. And every true species, however slightly it may differ from its nearest relative, represents such a creative act, and once created is practically unchangeable. This is the theory of immutability of species. According to the second theory all higher, probably all present existing, species are only mediately the result of a creative act. The first living germ, whenever and however created, was infused with power to give birth to higher species. Of these and their descendants some would continue to advance, others would degenerate. Each theory demands equally for its ultimate explanation a creative act; the second as much as, if not more than, the first.

According to the first theory the creative power has been distributed over a series of acts, according to the second theory it has been concentrated in one primal creation. The second is the theory of the mutability of species, or, in general, of evolution, but not necessarily of Darwinism alone.

The first theory is considered by many the more attractive and hopeful. Now a theory need not be attractive, nor at first sight appear hopeful, provided only it is true. But let me call your attention to certain conclusions which, as it appears to me, are necessarily involved in it. Its central thought is the practical immutability of species. Each one of these lives its little span of time, for species are usually comparatively short-lived, grows possibly a very little better or worse, and dies. Its progress has added nothing to the total of life; its degeneration harmed no one, hardly even itself; it was doomed from the start. Progress there has been, in a sense. The Creator has placed ever higher forms on the globe. But all the progress lies in the gaps and distances between successive forms, not in any advance made, or victory won, by the species or individual. The most "aspiring ape," if ever there was such a being, remains but an ape. He must comfort himself with the thought that, while he and his descendants can never gain an inch, the gap between himself and the next higher form shall be far greater than that between himself and the lowest monkey.

And if this has been the history of thousands of other species, why should it not be true of man also? Who can wonder that many who accept this theory doubt whether the world is growing any better, or whether even man will ever be higher and better than he now is?

Would it not be contrary to the whole course of past history, if you can properly call such a record a history, if he could advance at all? Now I have no wish to misrepresent this or any honestly accepted theory, but it appears to me essentially hopeless, a record not of the progress of life on the globe, but of a succession of stagnations, of deaths. I can never understand why some very good and intelligent people still think that the theory of the immediate creation of each species does more honor to the Creator and his creation than the theory of evolution. Evolution is a process, not a force. The power of the Creator is equally demanded in both cases; only it is differently distributed. And evolution is the very highest proof of the wisdom and skill of the Creator. It elevates our views of the living beings, must it not give a higher conception of Him who formed them?

The plant in its first stages shows no trace of flowers, but of leaves only. Later a branch or twig, similar in structure to all the rest, shortens. The cells and tissues which in other twigs turn into green leaves here become the petals and other organs of the rose or violet. Let us suppose for a moment that every rose and violet required a special act of immediate creation, would the springtime be as wonderful as now? Would the rose or violet be any more beautiful, or are they any less flowers because developed out of that which might have remained a common branch? The plant at least is glorified by the power to give rise to such beauty. And is not the creation of the seed of a violet or rose something infinitely grander than the decking of a flowerless plant with newly created roses? The attainment of the highest and most diversified beauty and utility with the fewest and simplest means is always the sign of what we call in man "creative" genius. Is not the same true of G.o.d?

I think you all feel the force of the argument here.

There were at one time no flowering plants. The time came at last for their appearance. Which is the higher, grander mode of producing them, immediate creation of every flowering species, or development of the flower out of the green leaves of some old club moss or similar form? The latter seems to me at least by far the higher mode. And to have created a ground-pine which could give rise to a rose seems far more difficult and greater than to have created both separately. It requires more genius, so to speak. It gives us a far higher opinion of the ground-pine; does it disgrace the rose? We can look dispa.s.sionately at plants. The rose is still and always a rose, and the oak an oak, whatever its origin. And I believe that we shall all readily admit that evolution is here a theory which does the highest honor to the wisdom and power of the Creator. What if the animal kingdom is continually blossoming in ever higher forms? Does not the same reasoning hold true, only with added force? I firmly believe that we should all unhesitatingly answer, yes, could we but be a.s.sured that all men would everywhere and always believe that we, men, were the results of an immediate creative act.

But why do we so strenuously object to the application to ourselves of the theory of evolution? One or two reasons are easily seen. We have all of us a great deal of innate sn.o.bbery, we would rather have been born great than to have won greatness by the most heroic struggle. But is man any less a man for having arisen from something lower, and being in a fair way to become something higher? Certainly not, unless I am less a man for having once been a baby. It is only when I am unusually cross and irritable that I object to being reminded of my infancy. But a young child does not like to be reminded of it. He is afraid that some one will take him for a baby still. And the sn.o.b is always desperately afraid that some one will fail to notice what a high-born gentleman he is.

Now man can relapse into something lower than a brute; the only genuine brute is a degenerate man. And we all recognize the strength of tendencies urging us downward. Is not this the often unrecognized kern of our eagerness for some mark or stamp that shall prove to all that we are no apes, but men? It is not the pure gold that needs the "guinea stamp." If we are men, and as we become men, we shall cease to fear the theory of evolution. Now this is not the only, or perhaps the greatest, objection which men feel or speak against the theory. But I must believe that it has more weight with us than we are willing to admit.

But some say that the theory of immediate creation and immutability of species is the more natural and has always been accepted, while the theory of evolution is new and very likely to be as short-lived as many another theory which has for a time fascinated men only to be forgotten or ridiculed.