The truth of evolution has swept away for ever this kind of sophistry. Evolution teaches unity in nature. The mineral, vegetable and animal kingdoms are composed of the same elements. The transition from one kingdom into another is almost imperceptible. There is no line to be drawn between living and non-living matter. Botanists and zoologists are often at a loss to determine to which kingdom certain specimens belong.[DP] There is unity in nature, and man is no less an integral part of nature than the air or the stars.
Now, man is a rational being. Hence an integral part of nature is rational, and there is rationality in nature. If a thousand millions of human brains, or a thousand million kilograms of brain-matter on our planet possess intelligence, reason, wisdom, judgment, memory, foresight, mind and ideas, then there is rationality in nature. Even if this rationality is now only perceivable in the human brain, it must, eons ago, have been present in potentiality in the primordial cell, which developed into the human brain, the flower of organic life. Nay, rationality must have transcended the primordial cell. “The soul, or the power of judgment, being the factor that makes experience possible,” says Bergson, “cannot be a complex of experience only, it transcends experience.”
The soul, mind and body become a unity in man, a trinitarian unity, a “Dreieinigkeit.” There is interdependence between the physical and the mental. The higher psychic centres are dominated and domineered by the lower, or vegetative centres. But two things, mutually dependent, are not for that matter equivalent. The subtle and delicate influences by which soul and body affect each other do not make them identical. The mind which includes intellect and emotion is something entirely different from the brain-cell. The action between mind and brain-cell is absolutely unknown to us.
Everything tends to show that there is an intelligence behind the creative energy in the world. All nature is in motion, in vibration, in harmony. Five hundred millions of stars, all flaming suns, whirling through space and carrying along with them systems of planets and satellites, can not do so without a directing intelligence. The universe must be supported by a principle, immanent or transcendent. Human logic, which itself is transcendental, forces every real thinker to acknowledge wisdom in nature. Natural, immutable laws do not explain the harmony of things, which the soul, tuned to the high, distinctly perceives. Who was the legislator of these laws but a transcendental intelligence? Besides, there is an infinite beyond of which gravitation is a puzzle. No man can imagine a limit beyond which there is nothing; on the other hand, nobody can imagine the infinite in time and space, things going on and on without end. Both are inconceivable, still one must be true.
The feeling of extension and duration must hence be transcendental in man, for it is entirely independent of reason. Reality itself—Das Ding an sich—is inconceivable by reason and is transcendental. The very idea of a thing is transcendental and eternal. “The logos, or the logical axiom,” says Bergson, “is eternal. The logical essence of a circle, e. c., the possibility of drawing a circle, is eternal and infinite. It has neither place nor date; for ‘Nowhere,’ at ‘No moment’ has drawing a circle begun to be possible.”
If reason and all its attributes are transcendental and eternal, then reason can only be a part of a larger reason. From nothing comes nothing. If there were no reason in the nature of the universe, whence did the primordial cell, which eons later developed into the brain of an Aristoteles, Kant, Spencer, get its reason? Whence do emotions, such as philanthropy and pity, honor and sense of duty, justice and love of truth, and all other ethical values come from? What is it that comprehends, feels, loves, wills, hopes, fears? It is the soul in man, a part of the Intelligence in the Universe, which Hinduism calls Trimutri, Judaism designates as Jehovah, and Christianity terms Logos. All these different names mean one and the same thing, i. e., the transcendental intelligence behind the universe, of which man is the conscious part of the scheme.
Hence the philosopher looking for the will of the Supreme Intelligence, will have to return to nature, and especially to human nature. For as Protagoras cogently once said: πάντων χρημάτων μέτρον ἄνθρωπος, “man is the measure of all things.” Now, what does nature will? We find in organic nature excessive production and wholesale destruction. The abundance of the reproductive cells in plant and animal is simply amazing. Every ejaculation in man contains two or three hundred million spermatozoa, each one of them sufficient for impregnation. Each ovary of the new-born baby girl contains about thirty thousand ova, each potentially a human being. The first effort of growth is to set aside a part of the germ itself for future reproduction, so that the germ may be indefinitely multiplied and handed down to untold generations. The reproductive cells, the cells which have not lost the primary power of multiplication, are of the first consideration; the specialized cells, or the somatic cells which cannot reproduce any longer, are of secondary importance. Nature’s sole solicitation is the race. The supreme law of organic nature is the preservation of the kind. Her sole aim is the perpetuation of the species, hence the abundance of the germ-plasm in plant and animal. Nature takes no chances. She secures the continuance of the kind by the extravagant production of material and the ruthless destruction of all that is superfluous. Nature preserves the individual until it has brought forth its offspring, after the message is delivered, the messenger is discharged. Nature has no regard for the individual. The fly is destined as a prey to the spider, the spider to the swallow, the swallow to the hawk, the hawk to the eagle, and the eagle to the hunter. But what is the hunter’s destiny?
Here nature is silent. The crown of creation seems to be here for no purpose. Man seems to have no value whatever. The individual does not count, it is created to be destroyed. Nature is careless of the single life. The individual may wither, the race is more and more.[DQ] Everything that serves to improve the race is in harmony with nature. But to what purpose is the race here? Cosmic nature owes us the answer. But when we return to a certain part of nature, the conscious part of nature, human nature, we find the hints for the reason of our existence. It is the experience of the divine urge of progress and the certainty that the crown of altruism is of the highest value in life. Both these qualities are transcendental, bestowed already upon the primordial cell by the creative power of the universe. Self-sacrifice resides in every cell. In every drop of pus millions of dead white corpuscles, or cells can be seen who, in the defence of the colony or the human body, sacrificed themselves in the struggle with the invading bacteria. This cellular self-sacrifice has developed in man into the impulse to serve others, the inner possession of every human heart.
Altruism becomes thus the criterion of morality. There is no morality for him who lives in solitude, there is only right conduct. Morality is bound up with altruism, which on the highest scale of moral development overcomes egotism. Man feels then a moral obligation within himself to serve others in the face of human need, of hunger, thirst, loneliness, nakedness, sickness, etc. This obligation is felt in obedience to Kant’s categorical imperative. The moral feeling is a part of man’s life, it is transcendental. Morality and character are functions of the brain like memory or imagination. The essence of morality is as unexplainable by mechanical laws as the nature of life itself. The creative power that gave life to man implanted in him moral aspirations of the whole soul. The moral law is hence based upon human feeling. What the throbbing heart of the best of humanity considers right is the will of the Supreme Intelligence, and hence the moral law. Human feeling and human longing are the basis of every moral action. When it is agreed among the best men, everywhere, and in every epoch, that altruism is noble and that egotism is ignoble, then altruism is the foundation of morality. The larger the altruistic circle is, the praiseworthier it is. To benefit one’s family is laudable, but a service rendered in the interest of the community, of the nation, or of the human race, is far worthier. The highest degree of morality is hence reached in actions rendered in the interest of the race.