I
In studying the influence of Darwin and Darwinism, it is well to begin by realizing clearly the crude orthodox religious conceptions which prevailed with the mass of mankind through the Middle Ages and well into the nineteenth century, as they prevail still in some form among large portions of the population in Europe and America. According to these conceptions the universe was created by an omnipotent, thoroughly anthropomorphic Deity. In that universe the terrestrial globe occupied a most important, if not a central and pivotal position. The globe was peopled by living beings, each created by the Deity in its particular form and kind, and all, like the whole existing universe, subordinated to man, who alone was endowed with a reasoning intellect and a moral nature. Thus gifted, he was an object of peculiar solicitude to his Creator, who interfered in every aspect of human fate, and whose favor could be secured and his wrath deprecated by prayer and by the conformity of human conduct to the divine decrees. In other words, the earth was the primary object of the universe, and man was the primary object of the earth, and hence of the universe also.
The speculations of Copernicus and the consequent development in modern astronomy, showing that the earth was not the center of the universe at all, but merely an insignificant and utterly inconsequential speck in the vastness of stellar space, gave this orthodox view a shattering shock. If the earth was of no consequence, how could man’s consequence be supreme? Theology, with its fortunate gift of agile adaptation, after first combating the new astronomy with all its zeal, finally worked out to a belated acceptance of what could not be resisted, and then ingeniously contrived, by huge effort of reasoning, to reconcile science with orthodox views and to restore man to his supremacy. But just when this had been happily and satisfactorily accomplished, along came Darwin, and shattered human distinction and superiority, and with them the ancient ideas of Deity, even more completely than Copernicus had done. It is no wonder that theology, exhausted by the earlier struggle, was at times inclined to balk and give up the contest.
What interests us first is Darwin’s own attitude toward the far-reaching consequences of his theory. In an earlier chapter we have considered his religious views, so far as they affected him personally. We are now concerned with the larger aspect of their effect upon mankind as a whole.
That he was conscious of possible effects from the start is evident. He had lived closely enough in contact with the orthodox attitude to appreciate the results of disturbing it, and the deeper results of disturbing the fundamental principles upon which it was based. Nevertheless, he does not appear to have felt, or at least to have been haunted by, the dread of a solitary and God-abandoned universe that afflicts some of us. He was sensitive to concrete fears: ‘You will then get rest, and I do hope some lull in anxiety and fear. Nothing is so dreadful in this life as fear; it still sickens me when I cannot help remembering some of the many illnesses our children have endured.’[154] But his general mental attitude was so healthy and so practical that he was not too much troubled by remote apprehensions and dim spiritual possibilities. Thus he was inclined to take an optimistic view of the workings of natural selection. He believed that, on the whole, the sum of happiness exceeded that of misery for sentient beings,[155] and he felt that indefinite progress and advancement for man were perfectly compatible with the conclusions to which his scientific study led him. As he puts it in ‘The Descent of Man’: ‘To believe that man was aboriginally civilized and then suffered utter degradation in so many regions, is to take a pitiably low view of human nature. It is apparently a truer and more cheerful view that progress has been much more general than retrogression; that man has risen, though by slow and interrupted steps, from a lowly condition to the highest standard as yet attained by him in knowledge, morals, and religion.’[156] With these undeniably optimistic leanings on Darwin’s part in mind, it is amusing to read Lyell’s remark, that ‘he had frequently been asked if Darwin was not one of the most unhappy of men, it being suggested that his outrage upon public opinion should have filled him with remorse.’[157]
At the same time, Darwin was perfectly aware that his theories tended to shatter the orthodox view of man and his supremacy and even the orthodox God. The sheer, simple statement of the matter appears in one vivid phrase: ‘What a book a devil’s chaplain might write on the clumsy, wasteful, blundering, low, and horribly cruel works of nature!’[158] Especially Darwin knew well what fierce hostility he should evoke from those who had grown up in the orthodox belief, were wedded to it by all the force of habit and tradition, and were intellectually unqualified to adapt themselves to any other. Therefore, from the beginning, he proceeded with the greatest caution and moderation of statement. This arose partly from his sweetness of temper. He had no desire to wound or destroy, except as the truth might compel him to do so. One early critic speaks admirably of ‘the magnanimous simplicity of character which in rising above all petty and personal feeling delivered a thought-reversing doctrine to mankind with as little disturbance as possible of the deeply rooted sentiments of the age.’[159]
It was this caution and considerateness that induced him to write such passages as the conclusion of the ‘Origin’ with its interesting introduction for later editions of the phrase ‘by the Creator’ in the last sentence.[160] And the caution did not result wholly from timidity or unwillingness to shock, but was also brought about by Darwin’s natural reluctance to commit himself in regions where he did not feel at home, or to take one step beyond the properly scientific province which he had really made his own. As to ultimate questions he confessed himself to be in ‘a muddle,’[161] and why should he interfere with the more definite creed of others?
On the other hand, where his conclusions were clear and well established, he meant to speak out, and let the truth prevail, without regard to the feelings of anybody. He wanted to sustain no cause, to push no argument for itself, he wanted facts and nothing else. And when he feels that he has yielded too much to popular prejudice and to the desire to conciliate it, his regret is decided and he determines to do so no more: ‘I have long regretted that I truckled to public opinion, and used the Pentateuchal term of creation, by which I really meant “appeared” by some wholly unknown process. It is mere rubbish, thinking at present of the origin of life; one might as well think of the origin of matter.’[162]
As regards this world, in questions of morals, of conduct, and generally of the bearing of evolution on sociology, Darwin’s own sturdy moral habit and self-poised temperament made him perhaps unduly optimistic. Temptation had little hold upon him. Why should it have more upon others, even unsustained by celestial guidance and control? In ‘The Descent of Man’ he endeavors to show the social instinct as a sufficient and satisfactory basis for upright living: ‘We have seen that even at an early period in the history of man, the expressed wishes of the community will have naturally influenced to a large extent the conduct of each member.... Thus the reproach is removed of laying the foundation of the noblest part of our nature in the base principle of selfishness.’[163] And elsewhere he adds, ‘It is not improbable that after long practice virtuous tendencies may be inherited.’[164] Yet the deadly, grinding, destroying implications of the struggle for existence do crop out everywhere, and the best intentioned efforts do not altogether disguise them: ‘It may be difficult, but we ought to admire the savage instinctive hatred of the queen-bee, which urges her to destroy the young queens, her daughters, as soon as they are born, or to perish herself in the combat; for undoubtedly this is for the good of the community; and maternal love or maternal hatred, though the latter fortunately is most rare, is all the same to the inexorable principle of natural selection.’[165] While Darwin’s optimism as to possible consequences appears, it seems to me, in a note to the ‘Descent.’ He is commenting on an article of Miss Cobb, in which she says, referring to his ethical explanations, ‘I cannot but believe that in the hour of their triumph would be sounded the knell of the virtue of mankind.’ On which Darwin remarks comfortably, ‘It is to be hoped that the belief in the permanence of virtue on this earth is not held by many persons on so weak a tenure.’[166]
When it comes to the bearing of evolution on another world, Darwin’s attitude is equally interesting, and equally inconclusive. To me one of the most characteristic and suggestive sentences he ever wrote occurs in a letter to Wallace, of August, 1872 (italics mine): ‘Perhaps the mere reiteration of the statements given by Dr. Bastian and by other men, whose judgment I respect, and who have worked long on the lower organisms, would suffice to convince me. Here is a fine confession of intellectual weakness; but what an inexplicable frame of mind is that of belief.’[167] The implications here are almost fathomless, but it is clear enough that to Darwin belief in general was not a spiritual necessity of his being, but merely came with the overwhelming obtrusion of fact.
In regard to a future life, Darwin recognized, in a passage I have quoted earlier, that a belief in it was needed to complete the process established here, and the dire necessity of the belief comes out clearly in the passage suggesting the tragic physical future of this earth: ‘I quite agree how humiliating the slow progress of man is, but every one has his own pet horror, and this slow progress ... sinks in my mind into insignificance compared with the idea or rather I presume certainty of the sun some day cooling and we all freezing. To think of the progress of millions of years with every continent swarming with good and enlightened men, all ending in this, and with probably no fresh start until this our planetary system has been again converted into red-hot gas.’[168]
Yet when the question of the future has been debated over and over, the result, as with other questions, is complete muddle and puzzle, and all that can be said of them is: ‘The conclusion that I always come to after thinking of such questions is that they are beyond the human intellect; and the less one thinks on them, the better.’[169] What at least stands out, is that Darwin does not greatly concern himself with the enormous dislocation of life in this world which is likely to follow the loss of belief in another.
And again, there is evolution and God. Darwin frequently insists that he is no atheist, and that his system must not be charged with any atheistical conclusion: ‘Let each man hope and believe what he can. Certainly I agree with you that my views are not at all necessarily atheistical.’[170] The belief in God is eminently useful: ‘With the more civilized races, the conviction of the existence of an all-seeing Deity has had a potent influence on the advance of morality.’[171] At every convenient opportunity God is given fair play and a fighting chance: it rests with Him to make the most of it. At the same time, the obstacles and difficulties are mountainous and it would appear insuperable. Thus, there is the conclusion of ‘Plants and Animals Under Domestication’: ‘If we assume that each particular variation was from the beginning of all time preordained, then that plasticity of organization, which leads to many injurious deviations of structure, as well as the redundant power of reproduction which inevitably leads to a struggle for existence, and, as a consequence, to the natural selection or survival of the fittest, must appear to us superfluous laws of nature. On the other hand, an omnipotent and omniscient Creator ordains everything and foresees everything. Thus we are brought face to face with a difficulty as insoluble as is that of free will and predestination.’[172]
But the result in any case, if God is left in His universe at all, is to remove Him very, very far away, and completely to demolish all sense of His intervention in the little daily actions and experiences of common life and all intimate communion and conference with Him in regard to those actions. When ‘The Descent of Man’ is published, Mrs. Darwin writes to her daughter, quite simply: ‘I think it will be very interesting, but that I shall dislike it very much as again putting God further off.’[173] For others besides Mrs. Darwin it reduced Him quite to the vanishing point.
But if Darwin himself was contented to let God alone, so far as possible, the more ardent and zealous of Darwin’s followers were inclined to hustle the Creator out of the universe altogether. This was especially true of the aggressive Darwinians in Germany. They extended the deductions of evolution to all the practical workings of human life in a fashion which Darwin distinctly disapproved: ‘What a foolish idea seems to prevail in Germany,’ he writes, ‘on the connection between Socialism and Evolution through Natural Selection.’[174] To Darwin’s energetic disciple, Weisman, the evolutionary theory seemed as solidly established as that of gravitation: ‘We know just as surely as that the earth goes round the sun, that the living world upon our earth was not created all at once and in the state in which we know it, but that it has gradually evolved through what, to our human estimate, seem enormously long periods of time.’[175] And in Weisman’s opinion, evolution would go on creating adequate moral ideals, as it has done in the past: ‘The number of those who act in accordance with the ideals of purer, higher humanity, in whom the care for others and for the whole will limit care for self, will, it is my belief, increase with time and lead to higher ethical conceptions, as it has already done within the period of human existence known to us.’[176] Häckel substituted an exuberant, triumphant materialistic atheism for the crawling superstitions of an earlier day.
In England Huxley endeavored to emphasize the complete separation of religion and science, though no one really knew better than he how fatally they interlock at every step. Spencer, in providing evolution with a metaphysical apparatus, extended its bearing into all the regions of speculative thought. It is not probable that he is much read at present, but his ‘First Principles’ spread a wide leaven of agnosticism among the youth of a generation ago, and I do not know where you will find a more desolating statement of the possible barrenness of evolutionary results than in the conclusion of his Autobiography: ‘Then behind these mysteries lies the all-embracing mystery—whence this universal transformation which has gone on unceasingly throughout a past eternity and will go on unceasingly throughout a future eternity? And along with this rises the paralyzing thought—what if, of all this that is thus incomprehensible to us, there exists no comprehension anywhere? No wonder that men take refuge in authoritative dogma.... Lastly come the insoluble questions concerning our own fate: the evidence seeming so strong that the relations of mind and nervous structure are such that cessation of the one accompanies dissolution of the other, while simultaneously comes the thought, so strange and so difficult to realize, that with death there lapses both the consciousness of existence and the consciousness of having existed.’[177]