Finally, in the latter half of the last century, these two tendencies at last reached their zenith, and culminated in a discovery which, by some, is considered as the proudest product of the English mind. This discovery, which was at once a gospel and a solution of all world riddles, and which infected the whole atmosphere of Europe from Edinburgh to Athens, was the Evolutionary Hypothesis as expounded by Darwin and Spencer.
A more utterly vulgar, mechanistic, and depressing conception of life and man cannot be conceived than this evolutionary hypothesis as it was presented to us by its two most famous exponents; and its immediate popularity and rapid success, alone, should have made it seem suspicious, even in the eyes of its most ardent adherents.
And yet it was acclaimed and embraced by almost everybody, save those, only, whose interests it assailed.
How much more noble was the origin of the world as described even in Genesis, Disraeli was one of the first to see and to declare;[44] and yet, so strong was the faith in a doctrine which, by means of its popular proof through so-called facts, could become the common possession of every tinker, tailor and soldier, that people preferred to think they had descended from monkeys, rather than doubt such an overwhelming array of data, and regard themselves still as fallen angels.
In its description of the prime motor of life as a struggle for existence; in its insistence upon adaptation to environment and mechanical adjustment to external influences;[45] in its deification of a blind and utterly inadequate force which was called Natural Selection; and above all in its unprincipled optimism, this new doctrine bore the indelible stamp of shallowness and vulgarity.
According to it, man was not only a superior monkey, but he was also a creature who sacrificed everything in order to live; he was not only a slave of habit, but he was a yielding jelly, fashioned by his surroundings; he was not only a coward, but a cabbage; and, with it all, he was invoked to do nothing to assist the world process and his own improvement; for, he was told by his unscrupulous teachers, that "evil tended perpetually to disappear,"[46] and that "progress was therefore not an accident, but a necessity."[47]
Thus not only was man debased, but we could now fold our arms apathetically, and look on while he dashed headlong to his ruin.[48]
"No," said the evolutionists, "we do not believe in a moral order of things, although our doctrine does indeed seem to be a reflection of such an order; neither do we believe in God: but we certainly pin our faith to our little idol Evolution, and feel quite convinced that it is going to make us muddle through to perfection somehow—look at our proofs!"
And what are these proofs? On all sides they are falling to bits, and we are quickly coming to the conclusion that an assembly of facts can prove nothing—save the inability of a scientist to play the rôle of a creative poet.
Nietzsche was one of the first to see, that if Becoming were a reliable hypothesis, it must be supported by different principles from those of the Darwinian school, and he spared no pains in sketching out these different principles.[49]