A Review of the Systems of Ethics Founded on the Theory of Evolution

by Cora May Williams

With all these facts before us, how are we to decide as to the end in view in any non-human act? How can we be sure whether the bird which covers its eggs is acting with a view to the production of offspring or merely, as some authors have assumed, to the more immediate end of cooling its own breast.[125] How do we know whether any feeling which we might term mother-love is active in the sphex's care for her eggs, whether they are, as some authors have suggested, a part of her own ego and therefore cared for, or whether the act of caring for them has not finally come to have some immediate pleasure connected with it, such as accompanies the satisfaction of hunger or the sexual instinct, the pleasure itself being sought as an end? How do we know even whether the impaled butterfly is endeavoring to escape pain or merely attempting to continue its flight?

There appear to be some general lines that we may draw. Thus, for instance, all facts seem to justify the assumption that the possession of a nervous system involves sensibility and susceptibility to pain and pleasure; and thus it is hardly consistent to suppose that the struggle of the impaled butterfly can be without pain. It might be at times more agreeable to our selfishness to suppose animals insusceptible of pain, but I think we can scarcely lay that flattering unction to our soul, and must face the assumption of their sensibility and feeling. The question as to whether the butterfly has any distinct idea of escape as an end to be striven for is a different one and not so easily solved. Yet as regards conscious ends, too, we may be able to arrive at some general conclusions with respect to the acts of animals, even of those low in the scale. Some such conclusions have already been reached in our considerations. But it is to be noted that all these are purely negative—exclusions not inclusions. We may be able to say, for instance, after careful experiment and observation, that this or that act takes place where there is no possibility of previous knowledge, on the part of the animal performing it, of this or that result (which we may, however, regard as an end that should especially be desired by the animal), and that this particular result cannot, therefore, be an end present to the animal mind, as such, in performing the act. Lubbock believes that the passive state of the caterpillar in its cocoon during its transformation to a butterfly is a necessary condition of its preservation, since the mouth while undergoing change to an organ adapted to sucking, and the digestive organs during their preparation for the assimilation of honey, must be useless, and therefore the animal in an active state must perish of starvation. It is scarcely to be supposed, however, that the insect is aware of these ends of self-preservation involved in the state of passivity in the cocoon and knowingly seeks them as ends. Since the metamorphosis takes place but once in the individual life, the insect has no means of learning anything about it beforehand from his individual experience (though, even if this were not true, there would still remain the first instance of cocoon-spinning to be explained); and it is both difficult to suppose that the caterpillar has always had opportunity to be instructed in some way by butterflies of his kind, as well as unnecessary to suppose this, since we see, in other cases, that acts useful to the individual may take place without previous instruction or experience. In the case of the sphex, too, as in that of many other lower species that provide for offspring they will never see, it is not to be supposed that the welfare of the offspring but rather some result nearer than this is the end in view, if any end be present to consciousness.

With regard to primary acts of instinct such as those of the newly hatched chicken, and the new-born infant, it would seem as if an argument like the following might hold; it is, in fact, often made use of in a somewhat different form. We have seen that not only the progress of the individual but also that of the human species as a whole has involved an ever increasing knowledge of the connection of processes with their results and the coördinate assumption of these increasingly distant and complex results as ends. The ends which animals with a less extensive knowledge of natural processes may postulate, must be nearer and less complex than our own, the ends of those whose experience affords them least extensive knowledge being nearest and simplest, until we arrive thus at those lowest forms of animal life which cannot be supposed to have any knowledge that may be termed such, whose action and reaction, in its psychical aspect, can be figured only as vague sensation.

But first as to this vague sensation. Among our own acts, in which "blind instinct" seems to play a rather larger part than reason, there are those in which the gratification of the instinct involved is attended with a peculiar pleasure, while the denial of gratification to a sufficient degree is correspondingly painful; these are the acts connected with the gratification of the primary appetites of hunger, thirst, and sex. The strength of the appetites, the degree of emotion involved in them, seems to be directly coördinate with their character as connected with primary functions. This being the case, why may we not suppose the functions of the simplest forms of life, which we believe to have been passed on from generation to generation almost unchanged, for the whole period of time occupied in the evolution of the human race, to be connected with feelings equally as strong as any of our own, or even stronger since function has been exercised on these few lines only? Feeling changes direction with the growth of man's knowledge, with the development of reason; it may be connected with new and more complex processes; but it would be difficult to prove that strength of feeling has increased except as connected with increased exercise of particular function—that is, it would be difficult to prove that the whole sum of feeling has increased. And if we may assume that it has not increased, then we must suppose as great a degree of feeling to be possible in the lowest animals as in man; and no reason appears why we should not suppose it to exist also in as great a degree in the plants and in the inorganic matter from which both these forms of the organic have sprung.[126]

And we have to notice a second fact: If the ends present to human reason are nearer ones according as the knowledge of the individual performing them is narrower, these nearer ends and the means of their attainment may yet be very clearly and thoroughly known, the narrower knowledge including the minute, often the minutest particulars, as far as it goes; and why may we not suppose the so-called "instinctive" movements of animals very low in the scale of being, which exhibit a most perfect adaptation as far as it reaches, to be connected with a like perfect, if very narrow, action of reason? Or why should we draw a line here between the movements of animals and all other movements?

We are thus brought face to face with a dilemma to which there appears to be no solution. If the solution is impossible, however, why attempt it? In this case, anything we may term solution can be only dogmatic assertion or else mere speculation. If the question is unanswerable, it is unanswerable, and there is no use in further endeavor in this direction. But, in reviewing our arguments, we shall find, I think, that that which led us astray at every turn and induced us to hope for an answer, now on this side, now on that, was the tendency to look for some independent cause, some essence, effecting change rather than being effected, or of which phenomena were only the properties. It was this which made us believe that we had found the means to an answer in reason as the cause of action towards ends, as also, again, that we had found it in the development of the higher organism from the lower, and of the organic from the inorganic. We know no such independent cause, no such essence. We know only variables, preceding conditions and succeeding conditions, all of which preceding and succeeding conditions we must regard as equally essential since they are equally actual; and we know in all variation a certain constancy of relations, which we, by abstraction, term law.

The argument which starts with the dependence of "ends" upon reason, and so infers a necessary intervention of reason where motion is such as to attain results regarded by the onlooker as ends to be desired, is often applied in a still wider form in Theology. Of course if we start with a definition of ends as results actually desired and premeditated, then we may infer reason from the assumed existence of "ends" in any case; but such a form of argument is evidently a gross case of petitio principii; we assume that which is to be proved,—namely, the desire and premeditation of the results attained. This fallacy ordinarily escapes the eye through the double significance of the word "end" as it is generally used; in the premises of the argument the use of the word is justifiable if no implications of reason and will are associated with it; but, with such a non-committal definition of the word, the conclusion noticed could never be reached, we should find ourselves at the end of the argument no nearer it than we were at the beginning.

The gradual development of stability from instability, harmony from disharmony, a state where collision is at a minimum from one where it was at a maximum, may be regarded as furnishing the best phase possible of a teleological argument. Even the dissolution of any system is part, according to the theory, of the evolution of some higher system of stability, that is, of one including more elements. This leads us, however, to the question of the definition of "higher"; the friends of theological Teleology are very ready to define the development of life up to man as the development of higher from lower forms, but are they willing to regard a succeeding stage of still greater stability, a state of barren and lifeless rest like that of the moon's surface, which our earth will probably one day attain, as a yet higher stage of development, the destruction of man and of the earth as part of a higher evolution? We have to consider, further, that, unless we assume some final state of absolute stability for the universe, we can suppose only an asymptotic evolution towards it, in which higher and higher systems of stability are developed only to be again destroyed. We know nature only as involving such processes of evolution and dissolution; we know no enduring stability. If we regard merely the side of evolution in these processes, we may seem to have a strong argument for design; but if we give attention to the dissolution succeeding every evolution, the argument loses its force. And, again, if we assume the continual order of destruction, reconstruction, and re-destruction finally to give place to a condition of absolute stability, the question may be recurred to whether this state could be one of motion, whether it must not rather be conceived as one of absolute rest, some frozen peace of which the moon's is but an imperfect type. We may ask, then, whether the friends of the teleological argument would agree to designate this state, which is highest from a mathematical point of view since it includes all the elements of the universe, as highest in any point of view favoring a theological theory of design. The teleological argument is accustomed to take into consideration only the evolution side of natural process; the pessimistic argument lays emphasis, on the other hand, on all forms of dissolution,—both views corresponding thus, as a matter of fact, to but half the truth. Even if we do not look beyond the evolution upon the earth, it is evident that each step in advance is marked by wide-spread destruction, each survival of the few bought at the expense of the slaughter of the many. We may overlook the slaughter, but it does not the less exist; we may egoistically shut our eyes to the pain, when it is not our pain, but it is not the less a fact.

But further than this: Our previous investigations have shown us difficulties on every side, when we have attempted to assume reason in matter as the cause of stability or harmony, preservative action, or the survival of the fittest. We may argue that mere matter and motion cannot have produced such results as these; but how do we know this? How have we such an intimate acquaintance with the nature of matter and motion that we can assert this? Where were we at the origin of the universe (if we suppose such) or where were we at the origin of life, that we should be able to be assured of this? Or how do we know in any case, from an origin, what might evolve with time? We obviously cannot argue from the analogy of man's action, since he is a part of the problem itself, included in the question, and such an analogy is a petitio principii. If we have found it impossible to assume reason as cause in his case, how can we, by the analogy of his action and by a universal generalization, assume it as a Universal Cause? We have, in fact, absolutely no precedent from which to argue, and may answer,—when Wallace asserts that combinations of chemical compounds might produce protoplasm, but that no such combinations could produce living or conscious protoplasm,[127]—How do you know that they could not? We have, indeed, no evidence to the contrary: we do not know. If we assume the creation of protoplasm or the creation of the world to have been analogous to any of the phenomena of our experience, in which we find only certain constant results of the forces resident in matter, then certainly we have no precedent for asserting the necessity of divine creation; and if we assume the creation to have been essentially different from any of the phenomena of our experience, then certainly we have no data upon which to base any theory whatever concerning it. But the assumption that the creation of protoplasm, of the earth, or of the universe, was essentially different from any of the processes that we know, is a mere assumption, without basis: we have no data from which to argue in this direction; any hypothesis of such sort is made purely and absolutely a priori. A first appearance of protoplasm upon the earth we must infer from the facts furnished us by Geology and Astronomy; but a creation of either matter or motion is a mere assumption. As we know matter, it can neither be created nor destroyed. We cannot draw any inference from man's will, for man creates nothing; his action is itself a part of nature. Advanced theological doctrine tends more and more to limit the creation to the first communication of motion to matter or to assume some transcendental government of the universe, known, according to the assumption, transcendentally, or inferred from the existence of moral tendency or from desire for the transcendental in man. With Transcendentalism we have, as yet, nothing to do; and with moral principle in its bearings on this matter we cannot deal until later. But as for the hypothesis of a first communication of motion to "dead" matter, we may remark, as before, that this is a mere hypothesis with no facts to support it. We know nothing of motion apart from matter, or of matter except through motion; the two cannot be separated in fact, and there is no reason for their separation in hypothesis or theory. Du Prel says: "Whether causeless motion is scientifically conceivable, depends on whether we have to regard rest or motion as the natural condition of matter; for a motion that is not primary must, as newly appearing change, be preceded by a cause. But though experience might incline us to regard rest as the original condition of matter, and therefore to seek a cause for every motion, this is, nevertheless, only the result of an incomplete induction. For if it is true that we never see a motionless body pass into a state of motion without a cause, on the other hand, it is just as certain that a moving body can never pass into a state of rest without cause; and if this axiom can never be directly proved in processes on the earth, we can, nevertheless, show reason for it: motion on the earth cannot be imagined without resistance from obstacles, since the attraction of the earth and the moments of friction can never be removed. But the axiom is indeed indirectly proved by the fact that we see the velocity of a body decrease in proportion to the resistance of obstacles; the body can only then attain to a condition of rest when the moving force is consumed to the last remnant. Hence, if we subtract the whole sum of resistance to the motion, we have again the former condition, the motion with its original velocity.... Which condition of matter is the original one, rest or motion, experience cannot inform us. We have as good reason for regarding rest as arrested motion, as for regarding motion as disturbed rest. The requirement of an outer cause for the first impulsion of matter therefore has meaning only in so far as rest is claimed to be the original, natural condition of matter; but this claim cannot be substantiated, and the opposite is just as conceivable, namely, that rest is only arrested motion, and that all cosmic matter had motion from the beginning."[128]