Evolution

by F. B. Jevons

The Optimistic theory, that evolution is progress, only established its conclusion, that the process of evolution is necessarily from good to better, by means of arguments which denied the distinction between good and bad, and implied that our moral convictions were illusions.

The Pessimistic theory, on the other hand, assumed the reality of our moral ideals, but was forced by its adoption of the theory of Necessity to conclude that it is an illusion to imagine those ideals can be finally realised.

Both philosophies in theory profess to make no assumptions, to take nothing on faith, and to base themselves on nothing but what we actually know to be facts. In practice each of them does unconsciously base itself on faith and does tacitly make certain assumptions. But as the assumptions made are not precisely the same in both cases, they reach two very different conclusions—Optimism and Pessimism. Again, if each philosophy treats as illusions certain facts—the freedom of the will and the reality of moral distinctions—which the common sense and common consciousness of mankind hold to be real, it is because each philosophy arbitrarily rejects certain of the assumptions which common sense makes, certain articles of the common faith of mankind. Consequently, when we find that each philosophy is inconsistent with itself, and ends by implying that what it assumed to be real is in fact an illusion, we are led to suspect that its assumptions may not have been adequate or well-considered, its faith not great enough to remove mountains or explain the world.

The conception of a "positive" philosophy—that is, a philosophy which confines itself to positive facts, and which is "agnostic" in the sense that it does not profess to know what it knows it does not know—is borrowed from science. It is an attempt to carry the methods of science into the domain of philosophy, to substitute science for philosophy. The attempt is made under the impression that science does not profess to know what it knows it does not know, i.e. makes no assumptions and takes nothing on faith. That impression, however, is, as we have argued in the last chapter but one, a false impression: the Uniformity of Nature is a pure—and rational—assumption. If, therefore, a philosophy confined itself strictly within the bounds of science, it would not be strictly positive or agnostic: it would still make some assumptions, even if only those made by science, and would still, even if it confined itself to the positive facts of science, be taking something on faith. A sound philosophy is one, not that makes no assumptions, but which seeks to find out what assumptions are made by any department of knowledge or practice—science, art, evolution, morality, religion—and how far those assumptions will carry us. The bane of philosophy is not making assumptions—all thought does—but is thinking you have made none.

Common sense assumes that the testimony of consciousness, so far as it can be verified by consciousness, can be trusted as evidence of the reality of that which is presented to it. Positive or agnostic philosophies, whether of the optimistic or the pessimistic type, on the principle of making no assumptions, reject this one, either on the ground that the Real is Unknowable (which is itself an assumption as incapable of proof or disproof as the assumption that the Real is Knowable) or on the ground that we only know our states of consciousness, and cannot know whether there is or is not any reality beyond them (which again is simply an assumption that consciousness as evidence of a reality beyond itself is not to be trusted).

Now, granted that common sense makes an assumption here, as it assuredly does, it is one such as can only be rejected by making a counter-assumption: to refuse to trust consciousness as evidence of a reality beyond itself is to make the assumption that it is not trustworthy—which may or may not be true, but is just as much an assumption as the supposition of its trustworthiness is. The positive and agnostic philosophies, therefore, do not succeed in avoiding assumptions in this matter: they only tacitly add another to that which they have already unconsciously made by assuming that Nature is uniform.

If, now, they adhered to these assumptions, we might proceed to ask what conclusions they deduced from them. We should not, indeed, expect their conclusions to be the same as those reached by persons starting from the opposite hypothesis, viz. that consciousness is trustworthy. And we should not agree that they were superior to those reached by the common sense and drawn from the common faith of mankind. We should only admit that they were different, because drawn from different premises. The argument that the teaching of a philosophy which makes no assumptions must be superior to one that does, is an argument which, whatever its value, we should have to set aside in this case, on the ground that the agnostic philosophies are not so ignorant as they modestly profess to be: they do know something—they know that Nature is uniform, and that consciousness as evidence of reality is not to be trusted—or they assume they know.

But the positive philosophies do not adhere to their assumptions. Few philosophers do. The optimistic evolutionist takes back his remark about the untrustworthiness of consciousness, so far as material things are concerned: matter and motion at any rate are real, and consciousness is good evidence, as good as can be got, of their reality. The pessimistic evolutionist also repents him, as far as our moral convictions are concerned: they are fundamentally real; our consciousness of the moral ideal is our best evidence for it.

On the other hand, both the optimistic and the pessimistic evolutionist adhere with perfect consistency to their rejection of the evidence given by consciousness to the freedom of the will. But here, too, the assumption of common sense cannot be rejected without a counter-assumption: if it is a pure assumption to say that things could have happened otherwise than they did, it is equally mere assumption to say they could not.

Finally, there is one other assumption made by the common faith of mankind and rejected by positive philosophies. It is that the world, i.e. everything of which man's consciousness is aware and to the reality of which his consciousness is evidence, is the expression of self-determining will, human and superhuman, manifesting itself directly to his consciousness. This assumption, too, has its counter-assumption—that there is no self-determining will, human or superhuman—and to reject the one assumption is to accept the other. To say that you do not know whether a man's word may be trusted or not is literally agnosticism, and may be the only rational attitude to assume, e.g. if the man is an absolute stranger, as most witnesses in court are to the judge who tries the case. But on the ground of your ignorance to refuse to pay any attention to his evidence when given is to abandon your agnosticism—if a judge directs the jury to disregard the evidence of the witness, the presumption is that he assumes it to be false. So, too, if we disregard the evidence of consciousness on this or any other point, we do not thereby succeed in avoiding assumptions, we only assume that consciousness is not trustworthy.[37]