II. Metaphysical Evolution.
It is infinitely improbable that a being endowed with such capacities for gradual progress as man has exhibited, should have been full fledged in accomplishments at the moment when he could first claim his high title, and abandon that of his simious ancestors. We are therefore required to admit the growth of human intelligence from a primitive state of inactivity and absolute ignorance; including the development of one important mode of its expression—speech; as well as that of the moral qualities, and of man’s social system—the form in which his ideas of morality were first displayed.
The expression “evolution of morality” need not offend, for the question in regard to the laws of this evolution is the really important part of the discussion, and it is to the opposing views on this point that the most serious interest attaches.
The two views of evolution already treated of, held separately, are quite opposed to each other. The first (and generally received) lays stress on the influence of external surroundings, as the stimulus to and guidance of development: it is the counterpart of Darwin’s principle called Natural Selection in material progress. This might be called the Conflict theory. The second view recognizes the workings of a force whose nature we do not know, whose exhibitions accord perfectly with their external surroundings (or other exhibitions of itself), without being under their influence or more related to them, as effect to cause, than the notes of the musical octave or the colors of the spectrum are to each other. This is the Harmonic theory. In other words, the first principle deduces perfection from struggle and discord; the second, from the coincident progress of many parts, forming together a divine harmony comparable to music. That these principles are both true is rendered extremely probable by the actual phenomena of development, material and immaterial. In other words, struggle and discord ever await that which is not in the advance, and which fails to keep pace with the harmonious development of the whole.
All who have studied the phenomena of the creation believe that there exists in it a grand and noble harmony, such as was described to Job when he was told that “the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy.”
α. Development of Intelligence.
If the brain is the organ of mind, we may be surprised to find that the brain of the intelligent man scarcely differs in structure from that of the ape. Whence, then, the difference of power? Though no one will now deny that many of the Mammalia are capable of reasoning upon observed facts, yet how greatly the results of this capacity differ in number and importance from those achieved by human intelligence! Like water at the temperatures of 50° and 53°, where we perceive no difference in essential character, so between the brains of the lower and higher monkeys no difference of function or of intelligence is perceptible. But what a difference do the two degrees of temperature from 33° to 31° produce in water! In like manner the difference between the brain of the higher ape and that of man is accompanied by a difference in function and power, on which, man’s earthly destiny depends. In development, as with the water so with the higher ape: some Rubicon has been crossed, some floodgate has been opened, which marks one of Nature’s great transitions, such as have been called “Expression points” of progress.
What point of progress in such a history would account for this accession of the powers of the human intelligence? It has been answered, with considerable confidence, The power of speech. Let us picture man without speech. Each generation would learn nothing from its predecessors. Whatever originality or observation might yield to a man would die with him. Each intellectual life would begin where every other life began, and would end at a point only differing with its original capacity. Concert of action, by which man’s power over the material world is maintained, would not exceed, if it equaled, that which is seen among the bees; and the material results of his labors would not extend beyond securing the means of life and the employment of the simplest modes of defence and attack.
The first men, therefore, are looked upon by the developmentalists as extremely embryonic in all that characterizes humanity, and they appeal to the facts of history in support of this view. If they do not derive much assistance from written history, evidence is found in the more enduring relics of human handiwork.
The opposing view is, that the races which present or have presented this condition of inferiority or savagery have reached it by a process of degradation from a higher state—as some believe, through moral delinquency. This position may be true in certain cases, which represent perhaps a condition of senility, but in general we believe that savagery was the condition of the first man, which has in some races continued to the present day.
β. Evidence from Archæology.
As the object of the present essay is not to examine fully into the evidences for the theories of evolution here stated, but rather to give a sketch of such theories and their connection, a few facts only will be noticed.
Improvement in the use of Materials. As is well known, the remains of human handiwork of the earliest periods consist of nothing but rude implements of stone and bone, useful only in procuring food and preparing it for use. Even when enterprise extended beyond the ordinary routine, it was restrained by the want of proper instruments. Knives and other cutting implements of flint still attest the skill of the early races of men from Java to the Cape of Good Hope, from Egypt to Ireland, and through North and South America. Hatchets, spear-heads and ornaments of serpentine, granite, silex, clay slates, and all other suitable rock materials, are found to have been used by the first men, to the exclusion of metals, in most of the regions of the earth.
Later, the probably accidental discovery of the superiority of some of the metals resulted in the substitution of them for stone as a material for cutting implements. Copper—the only metal which, while malleable, is hard enough to bear an imperfect edge—was used by succeeding races in the Old World and the New. Implements of this material are found scattered over extensive regions. So desirable, however, did the hardening of the material appear for the improvement of the cutting edge that combinations with other metals were sought for and discovered. The alloy with tin, forming bronze and brass, was discovered and used in Europe, while that with silver appears to have been most readily produced in America, and was consequently used by the Peruvians and other nations.
The discovery of the modes of reducing iron ores placed in the hands of man the best material for bringing to a shape, convenient for his needs the raw material of the world. All improvements in this direction made since that time have been in the quality of iron itself, and not through the introduction of any new metal.
The prevalent phenomena of any given period are those which give it its character, and by which we distinguish it. But this fact does not exclude the coëxistence of other phenomena belonging to prior or subsequent stages. Thus, during the many stages of human progress there have been men more or less in advance of the general body, and their characteristics have given a peculiar stamp to the later and higher condition of the whole. It furnishes no objection to this view that we find, as might have been anticipated, the stone, bronze and iron periods overlaping one another, or men of an inferior culture supplanting in some cases a superior people. A case of this kind is seen in North America, where the existing “Indians,” stone-men, have succeeded the mound-builders, copper-men. The successional relation of discoveries is all that it is necessary to prove, and this seems to be established.
The period at which the use of metallic implements was introduced is unknown, but Whitney says that the language of the Aryans, the ancestors of all the modern Indo-Europeans, indicates an acquaintance with such implements, though it is not certain whether those of iron are to be included. The dispersion of the daughter races, the Hindoos, the Pelasgi, Teutons, Celts, etc., could not, it is thought, have taken place later than 3000 B. C.—a date seven hundred years prior, to that assigned by the old chronology to the Deluge. Those races coëxisted with the Egyptian and Chinese nations, already civilized, and as distinct from each other in feature as they are now.
Improvement in Architecture. The earliest periods, then, were characterized by the utmost simplicity of invention and construction. Later, the efforts for defence from enemies and for architectural display, which have always employed so much time and power, began to be made. The megalithic period has left traces over much of the earth. The great masses of stone piled on each other in the simplest form in Southern India, and the circles of stones planted on end in England at Stonehenge and Abury, and in Peru at Sillustani, are relics of that period. More complex are the great Himyaritic walls of Arabia, the works of the ancestors of the Phœnicians in Asia Minor, and the titanic workmanship of the Pelasgi in Greece and Italy. In the iron age we find granitic hills shaped or excavated into temples; as, for example, everywhere in Southern India. Near Madura the circumference of an acropolis-like hill is cut into a series of statues in high relief, of sixty feet in elevation. Easter Island, composed of two volcanic cones, one thousand miles from the west coast of South America, in the bosom of the Pacific, possesses several colossi cut from the intrusive basalt, some in high relief on the face of the rock, others in detached blocks removed by human art from their original positions and brought nearer the sea-shore.
Finally, at a more advanced stage, the more ornate and complex structures of Central America, of Cambodia, Nineveh and Egypt, represent the period of greatest display of architectural expenditure. The same amount of human force has perhaps never been expended in this direction since, though higher conceptions of beauty have been developed in architecture with increasing intellectuality.
Man has passed through the block-and-brick building period of his boyhood, and should rise to higher conceptions of what is the true disposition of power for “him who builds for aye,” and learn that “spectacle” is often the unwilling friend of progress.
No traces of metallic implements have ever been found in the salt-mines of Armenia, the turquoise-quarries in Arabia, the cities of Central America or the excavations for mica in North Carolina, while the direct evidence points to the conclusion that in those places flint was exclusively used.
The simplest occupations, as requiring the least exercise of mind, are the pursuit of the chase and the tending of flocks and herds. Accordingly, we find our first parents engaged in these occupations. Cain, we are told, was, in addition, a tiller of the ground. Agriculture in its simplest forms requires but little more intelligence than the pursuits just mentioned, though no employment is capable of higher development. If we look at the savage nations at present occupying nearly half the land surface of the earth, we shall find many examples of the former industrial condition of our race preserved to the present day. Many of them had no knowledge of the use of metals until they obtained it from civilized men who visited them, while their pursuits were and are those of the chase, tending domestic animals, and rudimental agriculture.
γ. The Development of Language.
In this department the fact of development from the simple to the complex has been so satisfactorily demonstrated by philologists as scarcely to require notice here. The course of that development has been from monosyllabic to polysyllabic forms, and also in a process of differentiation, as derivative races were broken off from the original stock and scattered widely apart. The evidence is clear that simple words for distinct objects formed the bases of the primal languages, just as the ground, tree, sun and moon represent the character of the first words the infant lisps. In this department also the facts point to an infancy of the human race.
δ. Development of the Fine Arts.
If we look at representation by drawing or sculpture, we find that the efforts of the earliest races of which we have any knowledge were quite similar to those which the untaught hand of infancy traces on its slate or the savage depicts on the rocky faces of hills. The circle or triangle for the head and body, and straight lines for the limbs, have been preserved as the first attempts of the men of the stone period, as they are to this day the sole representations of the human form which the North American Indian places on his buffalo robe or mountain precipice. The stiff, barely-outlined form of the deer, the turtle, etc., are literally those of the infancy of civilized man.
The first attempts at sculpture were marred by the influence of modism. Thus the idols of Coban and Palenque, with human faces of some merit, are overloaded with absurd ornament, and deformed into frightful asymmetry, in compliance with the demand of some imperious mode. In later days we have the stiff, conventionalized figures of the palaces of Nineveh and the temples of Egypt, where the representation of form has somewhat improved, but is too often distorted by false fashion or imitation of some unnatural standard, real or artistic. This is distinguished as the day of archaic sculpture, which disappeared with the Etruscan nation. So the drawings of the child, when he abandons the simple lines, are stiff and awkward, and but a stage nearer true representation; and how often does he repeat some peculiarity or absurdity of his own! So much easier is it to copy than to conceive.
The introduction of the action and pose of life into sculpture was not known before the early days of Greece, and it was there that the art was brought to perfection. When art rose from its mediæval slumber, much the same succession of development may be discovered. First, the stiff figures, with straightened limbs and cylindric drapery, found in the old Northern churches—then the forms of life that now adorn the porticoes and palaces of the cities of Germany.
ε. Rationale of the Development of Intelligence.
The history of material development shows that the transition from stage to stage of development, experienced by the most perfect forms of animals and plants in their growth from the primordial cell, is similar to the succession of created beings which the geological epochs produced. It also shows that the slow assumption of main characters in the line of succession in early geological periods produced the condition of inferiority, while an increased rapidity of growth in later days has resulted in an attainment of superiority. It is not to be supposed that in “acceleration” the period of growth is shortened: on the contrary, it continues the same. Of two beings whose characters are assumed at the same rate of succession, that with the quickest or shortest growth is necessarily inferior. “Acceleration” means a gradual increase of the rate of assumption of successive characters in the same period of time. A fixed rate of assumption of characters, with gradual increase in the length of the period of growth, would produce the same result—viz., a longer developmental scale and the attainment of an advanced position. The first is in part the relation of sexes of a species; the last of genera, and of other types of creation. If from an observed relation of many facts we derive a law, we are permitted, when we see in another class of facts similar relations, to suspect that a similar law has operated, differing only in its objects. We find a marked resemblance between the facts of structural progress in matter and the phenomena of intellectual and spiritual progress.
If the facts entering into the categories enumerated in the preceding section bear us out, we conclude that in the beginning of human history the progress of the individual man was very slow, and that but little was attained to; that through the profitable direction of human energy, means were discovered from time to time by which the process of individual development in all metaphysical qualities has been accelerated; and that up to the present time the consequent advance of the whole race has been at an increasing rate of progress, This is in accordance with the general principle, that high development in intellectual things is accomplished by rapidity in traversing the preliminary stages of inferiority common to all, while low development signifies sluggishness in that progress, and a corresponding retention of inferiority.
How much meaning may we not see, from this stand-point, in the history of the intelligence of our little ones! First they crawl, they walk on all fours: when they first assume the erect position they are generally speechless, and utter only inarticulate sounds. When they run about, stones and dirt, the objects that first meet the eye, are the delight of their awakening powers, but these are all cast aside when the boy obtains his first jackknife. Soon, however, reading and writing open a new world to him; and finally as a mature man he seizes the forces of nature, and steam and electricity do his bidding in the active pursuit of power for still better and higher ends.
So with the history of the species: first the quadrumane—then the speaking man, whose humble industry was, however, confined to the objects that came first to hand, this being the “stone age” of pre-historic time. When the use of metals was discovered, the range of industries expanded wonderfully, and the “iron age” saw many striking efforts of human power. With the introduction of letters it became possible to record events and experiences, and the spread of knowledge was thereby greatly increased, and the delays and mistakes of ignorance correspondingly diminished in the fields of the world’s activity.
From the first we see in history a slow advance as knowledge gained by the accumulation of tradition and by improvements in habit based on experience; but how slow was this advance while the use of the metals was still unknown! The iron age brought with it not only new conveniences, but increased means of future progress; and here we have an acceleration in the rate of advance. With the introduction of letters this rate was increased many fold, and in the application of steam we have a change equal in utility to any that has preceded it, and adding more than any to the possibilities of future advance in many directions. By its power, knowledge and means of happiness were to be distributed among the many.
The uses to which human intelligence has successively applied the materials furnished by nature have been—First, subsistence and defence: second, the accumulation of power in the shape of a representative of that labor which the use of matter involves; in other words, the accumulation of wealth. The possession of this power involves new possibilities, for opportunity is offered for the special pursuits of knowledge and the assistance of the weak or undeveloped part of mankind in its struggles.
Thus, while the first men possessed the power of speech, and could advance a little in knowledge through the accumulation of the experiences of their predecessors, they possessed no means of accumulating the power of labor, no control over the activity of numbers—in other words, no wealth.
But the accumulation of knowledge finally brought this advance about. The extraction and utilization of the metals, especially iron, formed the most important step, since labor was thus facilitated and its productiveness increased in an incalculable degree. We have little evidence of the existence of a medium of exchange during the first or stone period, and no doubt barter was the only form of trade. Before the use of metals, shells and other objects were used: remains of money of baked clay have been found in Mexico. Finally, though in still ancient times, the possession of wealth in money gradually became possible and more common, and from that day to this avenues for reaching this stage in social progress has ever been opening.
But wealth merely indicates a stage of progress, since it is but a comparative term. All men could not become rich, for in that case all would be equally poor. But labor has a still higher goal; for, thirdly, as capital, it constructs and employs machinery, which does the work of many hands, and thus cheapens products, which is equivalent in effect to an accumulation of wealth to the consumer. And this increase of power may be used for the intellectual and spiritual advance of men, or otherwise, at the will of the men thus favored. Machinery places man in the position of a creator, operating on Nature through an increased number of “secondary causes.”
Development of intelligence is seen, then, in the following directions: First, in the knowledge of facts, including science; second, in language; third, in the apprehension of beauty; and, as consequences of the first of these, the accumulation of power by development—First, of means of subsistence; and second, of mechanical invention.
Thus we have two terms to start with in estimating the beginning of human development in knowledge and power: First, the primary capacities of the human mind itself; second, a material world, whose infinitely varied components are so arranged as to yield results to the energies of that mind. For example, the transition points of vaporization and liquefaction are so placed as to be within the reach of man’s agents; their weights are so fixed as to accord with the muscular or other forces which he is able to exert; and other living organizations are subject to his convenience and rule, and not, as in previous geological periods, entirely beyond his control. These two terms being given, it is maintained that the present situation of the most civilized men has been attained through the operation of a law of mutual action and reaction—a law whose results, seen at the present time, have depended on the acceleration or retardation of its rate of action; which rate has been regulated, according to the degree in which a third great term, viz., the law of moral or (what is the same thing) true religious development has been combined in the plan. What it is necessary to establish in order to prove the above hypothesis is—
I. That in each of the particulars above enumerated the development of the human species is similar to that of the individual from infancy to maturity.
II. That from a condition of subserviency to the laws of matter, man’s intelligence enables him, by an accumulation of power, to become in a sense independent of those laws, and to increase greatly the rate of intellectual and spiritual progress.
III. That failure to accomplish a moral or spiritual development will again reduce him to a subserviency to the laws of matter.
This brings us to the subject of moral development. And here I may be allowed to suggest that the weight of the evidence is opposed to the philosophy, “falsely so called,” of necessitarianism, which asserts that the first two terms alone were sufficient to work out man’s salvation in this world and the next; and, on the other hand, to that anti-philosophy which asserts that all things in the progress of the human race, social and civil, are regulated by immediate Divine interposition instead of through instrumentalities. Hence the subject divides itself at once into two great departments—viz., that of the development of mind or intelligence, and that of the development of morality.
That these laws are distinct there can be no doubt, since in the individual man one of them may produce results without the aid of the other. Yet it can be shown that each is the most invaluable aid and stimulant to the other, and most favorable to the rapid advance of the mind in either direction.